Hyung W. Kwon

I earned B.S. (Agricultural Biology, 1992) and M.S. (Entomology, 1994) degrees at Seoul National University at Seoul, South Korea. For my master's degree, I studied insect and plant interactions by focusing on plant secondary metabolites that are physiologically active against insect pests such as the tobacco cutworm. Since I began studying at the University of Arizona as a Ph.D. student in 1997, I have become interested in behavioral mechanisms of insects in foraging, homing, and communication as well as neural mechanisms underlying learning and memory. Since I joined the Strausfeld lab of Arizona Research Laboratories Division of Neurobiology (ARLDN) in 1999, I have been working on mechanisms of insect learning and memory by using the American cockroach (Periplaneta americana). The questions asked in my study are, what are the rationale and design for identifying quantifiable behavioral paradigms that are able to demonstrate associative learning in the cockroach, and how insect brains process information that they receive. Currently, with David D. Lent , I have been developing visual and olfactory associative learning paradigms using the American cockroach by characterizing antennal projection responses (APR) to neutral visual cues associated with food odor after training. It shows that cockroaches can turn their antenna toward visual cues after training, suggesting that association between odor and visual cues without sucrose rewards. In the future, neural mechanisms of these behaviors are being studied with various neurobiological approaches.

Additional information can be found on my Curriculum Vvitae