News & Announcements

Jason Stumpff’s paper showing how kinesins control the movement of chromosomes on the mitotic spindle is featured on the cover of the May 15 issue of Developmental Cell. Jason, a former postdoctoral fellow in the Wordeman Lab, is now an Assistant Professor in the Physiology and Biophysics Department at the University of Vermont and is the primary and co-corresponding author on the paper. Linda Wordeman and PBIO Research Technologist Mike Wagenbach performed the TIRF analysis with live microtubules using a…

The Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives, a nonprofit organization of more than 300 leading neuroscientists, works to advance public awareness about the progress and promise of brain research. As eminent neuroscientists, Alliance members harbor an intense passion for scientific research and progress, but many of our members also have passions outside neuroscience. Stan Froehner was featured in the May issue of The Dana Foundation publication on The Arts of Neuroscientists. Stan is an avid photographer who enjoys several photography subjects,…

Chet Moritz (Assistant Professor of Rehabilitation Medicine and Physiology & Biophysics) was recently selected for a DARPA Young Faculty Award. “The program aims to identify and engage rising stars in junior faculty positions… and provide high-impact funding to these elite junior faculty early in their careers.” Chet’s research aims to develop treatments for injuries to the brain and spinal cord using neural engineering technology. The goal of this funding is to improve hand function by recording activity in the brain…

Fred Rieke, Professor of Physiology & Biophysics and HHMI, has received an Honorable Mention in the competition for the 2012 Marsha L. Landolt Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award. This award recognizes a UW faculty member who has made outstanding contributions to the education and guidance of graduate students. Named for UW Graduate School Dean Marsha L. Landolt who died in 2003, the Graduate School has recognized excellent faculty mentors yearly since 1999. Fred is the first faculty member in the School…

Two of our faculty will be promoted, effective July 1, 2012. Andres Barria has been promoted to Associate Professor (with tenure). Duk-Su Koh will hold the position of Research Professor. Congratulations, Andres and Duk-Su!

Sharona Gordon and Bill Zagotta are co-chairs of the Program for the 2012 Biophysical Society Meeting in San Diego. With more than 3,700 abstracts submitted, the meeting is expected to attract about 9,000 registered attendees from all over the world. Sharona and Bill worked with their Program committee to plan 21 symposia, 3 mini-symposia, and 5 workshops. New topics this year include “Soft Lithography for Biology” and “Biofuels.” Planning the event has been underway for over a year. Putting on…

According to data compiled by the ACDP, our department ranks 2nd in the nation in total grant support among Physiology departments nationwide. The ranking is up from 5th place last year. Funding from all sources, including NIH, NSF, HHMI and private foundations totaled almost $11.1 million in 2010.

After 33 years on the PBIO faculty, Albert Berger has joined the ranks of Emeritus Professor, effective July 1, 2011. Albert joined the department in 1978, was promoted to Associate Professor in 1980 and to Professor in 1985. Trained in chemical engineering (Bachelors degree from Cornell and PhD from Princeton), he worked as a research engineer for a few years before joining the faculty at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In 1972, he began graduate study at UCSF and earned a PhD…

On September 14-15, the Department held its annual retreat (officially the H.D. Patton Symposium) at the Sleeping Lady Resort in Leavenworth, WA. Presentations by faculty, students and postdoctoral fellows and a poster session introduced their latest research results. Our featured speaker was Paul Wiggins from the UW Department of Physics. The evening featured skits by the graduate students and music by Turing Machine.

Jane Sullivan and her colleagues describe a new function of presenilin-1 in their paper in the latest issue of Nature Neuroscience. Mutations in presinilin-1 are known to cause Familial Alzheimer’s Disease but the mechanism has remained elusive. This paper provides evidence that presenilin mutations impair the ability of neurons to recalibrate to changes in network activity. The results suggest that subtle deficits in synaptic function occur long before overt symptoms of disease pathology. The molecules responsible for these deficits are…