Bjoern Ludwar
Associate Professor of Biology and Director of Pre-Health

As a biologist specializing in physiology, I am interested in how the body functions. As arguable the most complex organ in the body, I find the brain and specifically how it produces behavior a fascinating research question. What information do sensory organs gather, how is this information transmitted to the nervous system, how do central neural circuits integrate and process signals, and how are muscles controlled?

A second area of interest of mine is the application of physiological knowledge to the problem the disease diabetes mellitus poses. As one of the fastest growing diseases which affects over 30 million people in the US alone, diabetes is one of the biggest healthcare challenges we face as society. Part of my research work focuses on methods that would enable us to detect a high risk to develop diabetes at an age when classical symptoms haven't established themselves, yet. Though intelligent lifestyle choice high risk individuals could then avoid the majority of medical complication typically associated with diabetes. For a list of my scientific publications please look at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=Ludwar.

I am the Director of Longwood's Health Pre-Professional Program - please ask me about our newly re-vamped Clinical Lab Science Program!

Courses I teach:

• Human Anatomy & Physiology (BIOL206, BIOL207, BIOL301)
• Invertebrate Zoology (BIOL315)
• Entomology (BIOL374)
• Special Topics Neurobiology (BIOL495) e.g. "Sensation & Perception" & "Neurobiology of Locomotion"