Eric A. Newman, a Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Minnesota, is a leader in the field of glial cell biology. He received his Bachelors, Masters, and PhD degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, did postdoctoral work at the Schepens Eye Research Institute, and was appointed to the faculty at the University of Minnesota in 1990.

Tess Kornfield received her PhD in neuroscience in 2015 from the University of Minnesota, where her thesis work focused on understanding how blood flow is regulated in the retinal vascular network.