News & Announcements

We are pleased to announce the international Symposium “Current Trends and Future Directions of Synaptic Plasticity Research” to be held at the University of Washington from July 18th through July 20th, 2013. Synaptic plasticity is the best cellular and molecular model of learning and memory and a highly dynamic field in modern neuroscience. This meeting will bring together 47 experts from the US and Japan to discuss recent research aimed to understand the molecular mechanisms of synaptic plasticity and to…

Graduate student Liza Shoenfeld stumbled across a startling statistic during her first year of graduate school: in 2006, only 15% of PhDs were in tenured or tenure-track positions 6 years after graduating. To find out where everyone else goes, she began interviewing PhDs who have pursued nonacademic careers. These interviews led to the creation of a website, Branching Points, that features career profiles, a beginner’s guide to informational interviewing, Q&A’s with recent PhD graduates, tools to aid career exploration, and…

Fred Rieke has been chosen as the recipient of the 2013 Marsha L. Landolt Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award, which “recognizes a faculty member who excels at the intense, one-on-one mentoring that is the hallmark of graduate study”. One university-wide award is made every year. Fred is the first faculty member in the Health Sciences to win this award. Current and former graduate students and postdoctoral fellows nominate candidates for the Landolt Award. Their recommendations weigh heavily in the determination of…

Wucheng Tao, a PBIO graduate student working with Bill Spain and Chris Ransom, has published a paper in the Journal of Neuroscience, the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, demonstrating that GABAA receptors influence neuronal excitability in different ways, depending on their subunit composition. The paper was highlighted by the Journal as one of the most important publications in that issue.

The future of rehabilitation therapy for victims of stroke or spinal-cord injury may lie in a small computer chip — called a neurochip — being developed, in cooperation, by the Washington National Primate Research Center (WaNPRC) and the UW’s College of Engineering. This chip could repair and ultimately restore function of neurological communication within areas of the brain, and between brain or body activities for people whose neurons have been weakened or damaged in some way. For example, a stroke…

Sharona Gordon, associate professor of Physiology & Biophysics, presented the first 2013 Science in Medicine lecture on January 14. Her lecture, entitled “No gain, no pain: tuning TRPV1 ion channels to respond to noxious stimuli” described the molecular mechanisms by which the sensitivity of TRPV channels is modulated, an important characteristic of pain receptors. The Science in Medicine lecture series is sponsored by the School of Medicine and features UW faculty members nominated by their peers for this honor.

Over the past several years, PBIO has consistently ranked in the top 10 in total research grant funding of physiology departments nationwide, based on data assembled by the ACDP. This year, we were ranked no. 1. Despite the very challenging funding environment, PBIO scientists continue to excel. Congratulations to everyone — faculty, students, postdocs, technicians and our very dedicated support and administrative staff — on this accomplishment.

The Department of Physiology & Biophysics held its annual retreat on September 13 and 14 at the Sleeping Lady resort near Leavenworth, Washington on the east side of the Cascade Mountains. Nearby fires, a common occurrence in the summer, caused hazy skies but provided spectacular sunrises and sunsets. The retreat opened with comments by Bertil Hille about former chair Wayne Crill, who initiated the annual retreat in the mid 1990s. Wayne passed away several weeks ago, after a long illness….

Wayne E. Crill, neuroscientist, neurologist, teacher, and academic leader, died August 21, 2012 on Mercer Island, WA from complications of a neurodegenerative disorder. He was 77. Dr. Crill was born in Nampa, Idaho, received a B.S. degree from the College of Idaho and his M.D. degree from the University of Washington School of Medicine. He took his residency training in neurology under Fred Plum at New York Hospital at Cornell University. Since 1966, the rest of his professional life was…

Raunak Sinha, a postdoc in the laboratory of Fred Rieke, was awarded this year’s Otto Hahn Medal for his graduate work on ‘Optical analysis of synaptic vesicle protein molecules during exo- and endocytosis using pH-switchable fluorescent probes’. With the Otto Hahn Medal, the Max Planck Society recognizes ~30 young scientists each year for their outstanding scientific achievements. Raunak carried out his PhD thesis work in the Dept. of Membrane Biophysics headed by Erwin Neher at the Max-Planck Institute for Biophysical…