I received my B.S. in Biology from Penn State University where I minored in Psychology and had the opportunity to work with Dr. Richard Carlson, who introduced me to the fascinating field of cognitive psychology.  After leaving Penn State, I spent four years in clinical ophthalmology working with people who struggled with visual problems due to diseases of the eye or stroke and neurological disorders. This work showed me how much vision depends on the brain as well as the eyes and enhanced my appreciation for how much the fields of biology and psychology overlap. I have since worked on many projects aimed at improving the effectiveness of eye surgery by paying particular attention to the perceptual changes that can be brought about by certain procedures. Any changes to the eye, even if they result in improved visual acuity, create perceptual shifts to which the brain (and associated human) must adapt.

My experience in ophthalmology sparked a need to explore how the brain used visual information to guide behavior. I entered the behavioral neuroscience program at the University of Delaware and studied under the supervision of Dr. David Northmore. As a graduate student, I studied vision in two species of fishes to understand how they maneuver swiftly in three-dimensions without colliding with objects in the environment. Although fish are interesting in their own right, the ultimate goal is to apply this knowledge to the building of artificial visual systems for people with disabilities or robots that need to explore environments independently. I loved the interdisciplinary nature of Delaware’s program and my graduate research gave me the opportunity to work with clinical psychologists, neurophysiologists, behavioral biologists, and computer scientists. Upon completing my dissertation at UD, I spent another year there as an assistant professor teaching courses in Sensation and Perception and Neuroscience.

Since joining the faculty at Millersville University in the Fall of 2003, my teaching responsibilities have included Sensation and Perception, History of Psychology, Statistics, and Cognitive Science.  My research interests still follow the perceptual changes caused by eye disease and eye surgery, but I have supervised a wide variety of graduate and undergraduete student research projects on topics ranging from the ability to detect detuned musical notes to the effects of cell phone dialing on driving.

My non-Millersville time is spent with my wife, Laura, and our three children. I am also a part-part-time musician on a little mission to convince people that the best music has its roots in either the Ireland of the 1800s or the England of the 1980s. I continue to gather evidence in support of this theory.

Recent Publications

The Cornea Donor Study Group. (In Press). Cornea Donor Study Donor Factors Predictive of Graft Failures. Ophthalmology.

The Cornea Donor Study Group. (2008). The effect of donor age on corneal transplantation outcome results of the cornea donor study. Ophthalmology. 115(4):620-626.

Gallagher, S.P., Bartal, A.M., Whitehead, T.L., & Halpern, B.L. (2007). Pigment dispersion syndrome: An inherited form of glaucoma in a local Mennonite family. Journal of the Lancaster General Hospital. 2(3): 108-113.

Gallagher, S.P. & Northmore, D.P.M. (2006). Responses of teleostean nucleus isthmi to looming objects and other moving stimuli. Visual Neuroscience. 23(2): 209-219.