Dr. Siwek received his doctorate from Boston University in 1989. His dissertation included a study of the topography of the connections between the prefrontal cortex and the mediodorsal nucleus of the thalamus in the rhesus monkey. Immediately following this he received a National Research award from the National Eye Institute. He spent 3 years in the laboratory of Dr. Bertram Payne, learning techniques in neurophysiology and studying the nature of trans-callosal connections in the cat visual system. Dr. Siwek has worked at the Research service of the Veterans Administration Hospital in Bedford, MA since 1991. His work there has included the neurophysiology of neurons in brain slices of the auditory cortex of the rat. He was the Data Manager for the Boston University Alzheimer's Disease Center from 1995 to 2000. In 2000, he joined the Neuroanatomy core of a multidisciplinary program project study looking at the effects of perinatal diet on brain development and aging. At the present he performs the stereological and morphological analyses for the project and is focused on the basal forebrain and hippocampus. In collaboration with the Sleep Research Laboratory at BUSM, Dr. Siwek has worked on several projects that have examined various aspects of the neurobiology of sleep.

Dr. Siwek has been a member of the teaching staff for Medical Gross Anatomy and Neurosciences at BUSM for nearly 20 years, first as a graduate assistant and then as a regular faculty member. In addition he has designed and built several web sites including BostonBrain.org (BU Alzheimer's Disease web site) and the New England Veterans Integrated Healthcare System. He designed and implemented an on-line geriatric resources survey for the Veterans Administration in Washington, DC that was used for three consecutive years.

In addition, Dr. Siwek was a board member for DataWave Technologies, makers of physiological recording and analysis software and more recently he is serving as a consultant and advisor on a new NIH SBIR grant to develop an unattended 3-dimensional neuron reconstruction system being developed by MicroBrightField Inc.

Funding is derived from the Program Project Grant "Aging Of Brain--Effects Of Perinatal Nutrition" (Dr. JK Blusztajn, PI)