Saunders Lab

Hi, I'm Dr. Cecil J. Saunders, and this is my lab website, which is currently undergoing a much-needed update. Stay tuned. In the meantime, here is a little bit about who I am and my research interests.

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Kean University. My research laboratory focuses on the comparative neurobiology of the chemical senses, primarily using earthworms as a model system. This research is a natural extension of my career-long interest in sensory systems responsible for detecting chemical stimuli, the arcane chemical sense of chemesthesis, and the non-canonical expression of chemosensory receptors.

My interest in chemesthesis began as an undergraduate when I saw a presentation on trigeminal chemesthesis by Wayne Silver of Wake Forest University. I was so captivated by the subject I contacted him about pursuing a masters in his lab at Wake Forest University. After receiving my M.S. in Biology, I joined the lab of Tom Finger at the Rocky Mountain Taste and Smell Center and the University of Colorado, where my dissertation research focused on specialized epithelial chemosensors, solitary chemosensory cells, which trigger inflammation after detecting chemicals produced by nascent bacterial infections. Subsequently, I continued this work as a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Noam Cohen in  Department of Otorhinolaryngology at the University of Pennsylvania. In my next position as a Research Assistant Professor in the Biology department at Wake Forest University, my research focus shifted to working on with invertebrate models to facilitate undergraduate research in the comparative neurobiology of the chemical senses.