Brain Board

Jeff Leake, Board President
Image by Bill Griesar

A California bay area native Jeff holds a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from UC Davis. His art is based in the rich history of painting, literature, and natural science. Leake sifts through this various source material finding stories while constructing a world for himself. Through this process he examines how our traditions, histories, and cultural morals are translated through simple stories such as parables and fables. You can see his work at jeffleakeart.com

He currently teaches in the Psychology and University Studies departments at Portland State University where he works with his colleague (and fellow NW Noggin founder) Bill Griesar to teach art and neuroscience there, around the Portland area, and beyond. Additionally he has served on the Teacher Advisory Council at the Portland Art Museum.

He is also the Board President and Arts Coordinator of NW Noggin. As part of this organization he has been all over the country lecturing and teaching neuroscience through art including lectures on art and neuroscience for Science On Tap, the Portland Art Museum, the Society for Neuroscience and the Oregon Art Education Association. Along the way he has shown his art nationally and internationally, he has held several artist residencies at Caldera here in Oregon, and at UCROSS in Wyoming. He now shows his work at Gallery 114 in Portland where he lives and works with his wife, kids and dogs.

Kanani Miyamoto, Board Vice President

Carrie Ann Kanani Miyamoto holds an MFA in Print Media from the Pacific Northwest College of Art, and a bachelors degree in Art Practices from Portland State University. Miyamoto is a passionate printmaker and has had an education rooted in the traditional practices of printmaking. Her studio practice has recently expanded to non-traditional forms of printmaking including mixed media original prints, sculpture, installation, and animation. Her current work is inspired by her personal experiences as an individual of mixed heritage as well as life growing up in Honolulu. Issues of cultural and personal identity have been a major them in her work. She is originally from Honolulu, Hawai`i and is currently lives in Portland, Oregon.

Image by Steph Littlebird

Additionally, Miyamoto loves collaborations of all kind and is supportive of community based art. She is an advocate for art education and the integration of art in public schools. She also works with RACC’s Right Brain Initiative and NW Noggin’s STEAM program as a teaching artist. Both organizations focused on integrating art education with standard curriculum, with the shared belief that cognitive, creative learning fosters productive, divergent thinkers. Miyamoto believes that our society is in need of creative thinkers and providing quality arts based education will enrich the world we live in.

Bill Griesar, Board Treasurer

Image by Peter Ellsworth

Bill Griesar, Ph.D. is a Teaching Assistant Professor in Psychology and Interdisciplinary Neuroscience at Portland State University, founder and Neuroscience Coordinator of NW Noggin, Adjunct Instructor in University Studies at PSU, and Affiliate Graduate Faculty in Behavioral Neuroscience at OHSU.

He loves teaching  –  all ages, everywhere, all the time 🙂

Bill earned his bachelor of science from the Department of Neuroscience at Brown University, where he studied visual perception, and his doctorate in Behavioral Neuroscience at Oregon Health & Science University, where he explored the cognitive effects of nicotine in non-smokers. Along the way he’s worked in a public library in Dobbs Ferry, New York, a small grocery store in New Harbor, Maine, a college bar in Providence, Rhode Island, a publishing company in Manhattan, a research lab at Rockefeller University in New York City, as an English teacher (on the JET program) in rural Japan, as the author of a guide for North American undergraduates seeking study opportunities in Ireland and the U.K., as a university study abroad advisor in Los Angeles and Portland, and as Coordinating Officer for the Waseda-Oregon Program, a consortium of collaborating universities in both Oregon and Japan.

Bill developed and has taught neuroscience courses at Portland State University, OHSU, Portland Community College, Clark College, Washington State University in Vancouver and Lower Columbia College since 2001, and co-founded (with his PSU colleague Jeff Leake) the interdisciplinary neuroscience outreach nonprofit nwnoggin.org. Through NW Noggin (which is entirely volunteer) he’s met with more than 65,000 K-12 students and community members over brains and art. He’s been recognized as an innovator by the Obama White House, and has won numerous teaching awards. Bill and his husband are proud dads of two sons.

Personal Academic Narrative: Self_Assessment_Griesar_MILESTONE_Fall2021

Denesa Lockwood, Board Secretary and Member for Research Policy Outreach

Denesa Lockwood, Ph.D., is a Senior Research Associate at Oregon Health and Science University.  Denesa earned her bachelor of science degree from the Department of Psychology at Western Oregon University, where she studied the effects of self-evaluation on decision making with Joel Alexander, Ph.D. It was during those tedious hours in a dusty old “lab” that she realized how the pursuit of science could make any process or locale exciting. She then went on to obtain her Ph.D. in neuroscience from the Florida State University where she studied the role of phosphatases in the amygdala during learning and memory using a conditioned taste aversion model. She currently studies the genetic underpinnings of alcoholism in efforts to provide insight into that disease and how we might find a cure or prevention for it in the future. Dr. Oberbeck’s research has been published in several journals.  She is also on ResearchGate, and is a member of the Society for Neuroscience and the Research Society on Alcoholism.

Denesa has been teaching science as long as she was able; from bringing volcanoes into her childrens’ classrooms to teaching college students the basics of biology and the fundamentals of neuroscience.  She has also been active in the community in organizing the 2018 Portland March for Science and as a frequent career scientist judge in local and regional science fairs. In efforts to reach even more students, Denesa has been a volunteer with NW Noggin since 2016.  She has been honored to become even more instrumental in this outreach effort with the promotion to the Executive Board in 2018. She appreciates the high quality public schools in Vancouver, WA, where she lives with her three brilliant and beautiful children, two dogs, and a constantly fluctuating number of fish.

Kindra Crick, Board Member at Large
Kindra Crick

Kindra Crick creates art that gives visual expression to the wonder and process of scientific inquiry and discovery. In her installations and layered mixed-media work, she incorporates drawings, diagrams, maps and imagery from under the microscope. Crick has a degree in Molecular Biology from Princeton University and a Certificate in Painting from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Her work has been influenced by the inspired marriage of her grandparents, the scientist Francis Crick and the artist Odile Crick.  Kindra has exhibited throughout the U.S. and in the UK, including shows at the New York Hall of Science and MDI Biological Laboratory.  Her work is included in the LMB permanent collection in Cambridge, England and has been featured in the Huffington Post, Science Magazine, SciArt Magazine and Oregon Arts Watch. In the fall of 2017, she will be a featured artist on Oregon Art Beat and join the Jordan Schnitzer Printmaking Residency at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology.

You may experience some of her artwork at www.kindracrick.com.

As part of NW Noggin, Kindra has presented a NW Noggin SciArt Collaboration at Velo Cult, created a neuroscience-inspired installation for the Phillips Collection in D.C. and gave an accompanying lecture at the Portland Art Museum with Dr. John Harkness. She has been thrilled to lend her brainwaves to and  participate in arts-integrated neuroscience outreach with NW Noggin. She enjoys living, working and drinking coffee in Portland, Oregon.

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