Biographical Sketches of the 2009 Candidates for
President-Elect, Secretary Elect, Treasurer Elect and Council

President Elect Candidates:
Steve Levison | Eric Murphy

Treasurer Elect Candidates
Karen Chandross | Matt Rasband

Secretary Elect Candidates
Babette Fuss | Tammy Kielian

Council Candidates:
Rashmi Bansal |Scott Brady | Colin Combs | Judy Grinspan |Charles Howe |
|Phil Haydon | Tiina Kauppinen | Susan McGuire| Dana McTigue | Vlad Parpura | Wee Yong

Online Ballot

STEVEN W. LEVISON is a Professor in the Department of Neurology and Neuroscience at UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School. He received his PhD from the Neurobiology Graduate Program at the University of North Carolina, where he worked with Ken McCarthy. He then obtained Postdoctoral training with Jim Goldman at Columbia University in the College of Physicians and Surgeons. In 1993, he joined the Department of Neuroscience and Anatomy at Penn State where he served on the faculty for 11 years. He is currently the Co-Director of the Integrative Neuroscience Graduate Program of UMDNJ and Rutgers. Dr. Levison has been attending ASN meetings for over 20 years. He has served on Council, the program committee, the Jordi Folch-Pi Award Committee, the Publicity and Public Outreach Committee and he is currently Secretary. Dr. Levison is past president of the Central Pennsylvania Chapter of the SfN and is the current President of the NJ Chapter of the SfN. Dr. Levison has served on review panels for the NIH, NSF, VA, AIBS and as the Chair of an NIH Fellowship Review Committee. Dr. Levison has served as a consultant for researchers at MCP-Hahnemann, the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, the Universidad Central del Caribe, Puerto Rico, and the University of Texas Medical Branch. As of January 1st, 2009, he assumed the position of Editor-in-Chief for Developmental Neuroscience. He also sits on the editorial boards of ASN NEURO, the International Journal of Developmental Neuroscience, the Journal of Neuroscience Research and Tissue Engineering & Regenerative Medicine. He has authored over 65 peer-reviewed scientific articles and edited the book “The Mammalian Subventricular Zone: Its roles in brain development, cell replacement and disease”, published by Springer. Dr. Levison has long been interested in curing diseases of the nervous system. The group of scientists who currently work with him is testing strategies to enhance regeneration of the central nervous system by stimulating the resident stem cells that reside within the “brain marrow”.

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ERIC J. MURPHY has a PhD in Biochemistry from The Ohio State University where he studied with Professor Lloyd Horrocks in the area of lipid alterations during neural trauma. After a brief stint at Cypros Pharmaceutical in Carlsbad, CA, Eric rejoined academia taking an Assistant Research Scientist position at Texas A & M University where he studied the role of cytosolic lipid binding proteins in the laboratory of Professor Friedhelm Schroeder. He was awarded a prestigious senior fellowship from the National Research Council, which permitted him to work in Stanley Rapoport’s laboratory at the National Institute on Aging. Here he focused on the effect of neurodegenerative disease on brain lipid metabolism. In 2000, Eric joined the Department of Pharmacology, Physiology, and Therapeutics at the University of North Dakota as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associated Professor with tenure in 2007. At UND he has brought together kinetic modeling of lipid metabolism in vivo coupled with his expertise in cytosolic lipid binding proteins to study the role that these proteins have in brain lipid metabolism in human health and disease. Recent efforts have focused on the role of alpha-synuclein in neuroinflammatory response through its capacity to modulate lipid metabolism. In 1999 he received the Jordi Folch-Pi award for his work in brain lipid neurochemistry. In 2006 he was appointed Editor-in-Chief of Lipids, a journal of the American Oil Chemists Society. Eric has been an active member of ASN for over 20 years, since early on in his graduate career. He regularly attends the annual meeting and has served as an organizer of and chaired a number of symposia and colloquia. He served as the chair of the local committee that bid to host the 2005 meeting in Grand Forks, ND. He has served on the meeting program committee and currently serves as chair of the Jordi Folch-Pi Award committee and is a member of Council.

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MATTHEW RASBAND earned a PhD in Biophysics (1999) from the University of Rochester where he trained with Dr. Peter Shrager. His graduate work focused on neuron-glia interactions and the clustering of ion channels at and near nodes of Ranvier. Dr. Rasband continued to work on the mechanisms underlying K+ channel clustering in axons while he was a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. James Trimmer at SUNY Stony Brook. Dr. Rasband is an associate professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine. He has continued to study the intrinsic and extrinsic mechanisms regulating ion channel localization in neurons, with special emphasis on the role of myelinating glia in these processes. A major part of his research focuses on the role of the cytoskeleton in organizing polarized membrane domains such as nodes of Ranvier and axon initial segments. Dr. Rasband began regularly attending and presenting his research at ASN meetings while a postdoctoral fellow. In 2005 Dr. Rasband was awarded the ASN Jordi Folch-Pi award, and that same year also won the ISN young investigator award. Dr. Rasband currently serves on the ASN council and is a member of the program committee for the 2009 ISN meeting in Busan, Korea.

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BABETTE FUSS received her PhD (1992) from the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. Her graduate work in the laboratory of Melitta Schachner, revealed the molecular characteristics of the neural cell adhesion molecule Tenascin-R/Janusin. For her postdoctoral training, Babette moved to the University of California, Los Angeles, to join Wendy Macklin’s research group, where she started to investigate cellular/molecular mechanisms of oligodendrocyte differentiation and myelination. It was during this time that Babette began to regularly attend and present at ASN meetings. In 1995, Babette moved with Wendy Macklin to the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, where in 1997 she got promoted to the rank of Research Associate. In 1999 Babette joined the faculty of the Department of Anatomy and Neurobioloy at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she now holds the rank of Associate Professor. Her research focuses on the role of oligodendrocyte-extracellular matrix interactions and in particular the matricellular protein autotaxin on oligodendrocyte development and myelination. Babette has remained an active participant at ASN meetings and encourages her students to regularly attend. Michael Fox, one of her graduate students, received the Marian Kies award in 2004. Babette was on the program committees for the 2008 and 2009 meetings of the ASN, and she is currently serving on the ASN Council (2007-2011) and the Young Investigator Education Enhancement Committee (2006-2010).

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TAMMY KIELIAN received her B.S. in Biological Sciences from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1991, a M.S. in Immunology from Kansas State University in 1994, and a Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Kansas in 1998. Following 2 ½ years of postdoctoral training under the direction of Dr. William F. Hickey and promotion to Research Assistant Professor at Dartmouth Medical School, Dr. Kielian joined the faculty of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in 2001 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurobiology and Developmental Sciences and was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure in 2006. In July 2008, Dr. Kielian accepted a position as an Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology and Microbiology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Dr. Kielian’s research interests span the fields of neuroimmunology, infectious diseases, and neuroscience. Her laboratory has developed a mouse model of experimental brain abscess induced by Staphylococcus aureus as a tool to investigate the roles of innate and adaptive immunity in the CNS and the identification of pattern recognition receptors that are involved in the recognition of S. aureus by CNS glia. Additional research interests include the effects of neuroinflammation on glial gap junction communication. Dr. Kielian received the ASN Jordi Folch-Pi award in 2006 and currently serves as a member of the ASN Council, ASN Public Policy Committee, and ASN Nominations Committee and was a member of the Program Committee for the 2008 ASN meeting in San Antonio, TX. She was a presenter at the 2005, 2006, and 2007 ASN meetings and organized and chaired sessions for the 2006 and 2007 ASN annual meetings.

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SCOTT BRADY received his PhD in 1978 from the University of Southern California in Cell and Molecular Biology for work on the role of the cytoskeleton in axonal transport. From there, he joined the laboratory of Raymond Lasek at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH to continue his studies on both fast and slow axonal transport. In 1985, he became an assistant professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, TX where he remained until 2001. At that time, he became Professor and Head of Anatomy and Cell Biology at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine. During his time at CWRU, he began the practice of spending several months each summer doing research at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA where he has been a summer investigator since 1982. In the mid-1980’s, he worked with Dr Lasek and Dr. Robert D. Allen to develop the isolated axoplasm preparation for study of fast axonal transport. This led to his discovery in 1984-85 of a new class of molecular motor that were found to mediate anterograde fast axonal transport, the kinesins. He has continued his studies on the molecular mechanisms of axonal transport, including a strong interest in the regulation of this transport. These studies led to the demonstration that axonal transport plays a critical role in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s disease as well as Amyotrphic Lateral Sclerosis. He has also studied other aspects of the cellular and molecular biology of the axon, including myelin-axon interactions and the effects of chronic stress on neuronal function. He has been a member of the ASN since 1978 and has served previously on Council as well various committees. He is a past President of ASN and is the Editor in Chief of the 8th edition of the Basic Neurochemistry text. He is on various editorial boards and is the founding reviews editor for ASN Neuro.

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RASHMI BANSAL is an Associate Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Connecticut Medical School in Farmington, CT. Rashmi received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Central Drug Research Institute in Lucknow, India. She did her advanced neuroscience training with Dr. Steve Pfeiffer in the Department of Microbiology at the University of Connecticut Medical School, studying the role of glycolipids in glial development. She became Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology in 1995 before becoming tenure track and establishing her own laboratory in the Department of Neuroscience in 1999. Rashmi’s current research is focused on the role of growth factor signaling in oligodendrocyte development and axon-glial interaction leading to myelination under normal and pathological conditions. Rashmi currently serves on the NIH grants review group (CMBG Study Section) and is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Neuroscience Research. She has been an active member and attendee of ASN meetings for many years and has organized and presented at numerous ASN Symposia (1999, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2009). Rashmi has served for several years in ASN committees including the Public Policy and Education Committee (2004-2008), Presidential Advisory Committee (2006-2007), Young Investigators Educational Enhancement Committee (1995-1997,1999-2002). In addition to her services to ASN she has served on the CAEN Committee of ISN (2005-2007) and was currently elected to the Council of the Asia Pacific Society for Neurochemistry in 2008.

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COLIN COMBS is an associate professor in the Department of Pharmacology, Physiology, and Therapeutics at the University of North Dakota. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester in the Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy working with Dr. M. Kerry O’Banion and Dr. Paul D. Coleman. Subsequently, Colin did post-doctoral work with Dr. Gary E. Landreth at Case Western Reserve University in the Neuroscience Department and the Alzheimer Research Laboratory. His current lab interests are related to microglial phenotype changes in chronic neurodegenerative conditions including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and multiple sclerosis. He has been active and supportive of the society since 2002 through organization and participation of a colloquia as well as posters. He has encouraged regular attendance and poster participation by his graduate students at the ASN meeting and currently serves as a member of the Jordi Folch-Pi Award committee.

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JUDY GRINSPAN is an associate professor of Neurology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia/University of Pennsylvania. She received her Ph.D in Cell and Molecular Biology (1984) from the Wistar Institute/University of Pennsylvania where she trained with tissue culture expert Dr. Elliott Levine. She subsequently did her postdoctoral training with Dr. David Pleasure at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia where she first began working on specification and survival of oligodendrocyte precursors in tissue culture models, identifying and characterizing the oligodendrocyte pre-progenitor cell. In 1989, she became a faculty member at the Joseph Stokes Research Institute of Children’s Hospital. Judy’s current research focuses on the regulation of oligodendrocyte differentiation by cell signaling molecules during development and following demyelinating diseases. Her lab is particularly interested in the effects of dorsally- derived growth factors such as bone morphogentic proteins and wnts/beta-catenin on myelination and regeneration. She is actively involved in graduate student recruitment and mentoring. Judy did her first national presentation at an American Society for Neurochemistry meeting as a postdoc and has been attending ASN meetings ever since. She has run ASN workshops and has been nominating chair since 2006.

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CHARLES (CHUCK) HOWE has a PhD in neuroscience from UCSF. His graduate training was in the lab of Bill Mobley, where he worked to isolate and biochemically characterize the first example of a neurotrophic signaling endosome in neurons. His postdoctoral training at Stanford involved additional proteomic characterization of the signaling endosome, culminating in a computer modeling comparison of diffusion kinetics and facilitated retrograde transport that was performed at the University of Minnesota supercomputing facility. In order to expand his experimental repertoire, Chuck took a postdoc in neuroimmunology with Moses Rodriguez at the Mayo Clinic. This training allowed him to establish his own research program in 2005 at Mayo as an assistant professor of neuroscience and neurology and an associate consultant in immunology and neurology. His lab currently studies the cell biological mechanisms of immune-mediated axon injury associated with demyelination and the impact on neurotrophic signaling and neuronal stress caused by failed retrograde axonal transport of signaling endosomes. He is actively involved in graduate student training (both didactically and at the bench) and he serves as the director of the neuroscience PhD program at Mayo. Chuck is chairing a session on neurotrophic signaling endosomes at the 2009 ASN meeting in Charleston, and while he is a relatively new ASN member, he is eager to participate on the council.

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PHIL HAYDON received his B.Sc. (Hons; 1979) and Ph.D. (1982) from the
University of Leeds, England. He performed postdoctoral studies at the
University of Iowa (1982-1986) and then became a faculty member Iowa State
University (1986-2001). Subsequently he moved to the University of
Pennsylvania as Professor and Vice-Chair of Neuroscience and has recently
been appointed Annetta and Gustav Grisard Professor and Chair of
Neuroscience at Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston (2008). He has
received numerous prestigious awards including a McKnight Investigator Award
and the Jacob Javits Award from the NINDS. His research focuses on the
investigation of neuron-glial interactions and how astrocytes regulate
neuronal networks and sleep related behaviors.

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SUSAN MCGUIRE has a PhD in Nutritional Sciences (1995) from the University of Missouri at Columbia where she trained with Nutritional Immunologist Dr. Kevin Fristche. Susan directed her postdoctoral training towards Neurochemistry in 1996 when she joined the laboratory of Dr. Grace Y. Sun, investigating the effects of ethanol on neural inflammatory responses. It was at this time that she began to attend ASN meetings with Dr. Sun. From 1998-2000, she trained in the NIA Neurodegeneration and Aging Training Program at Rush Medical School in Chicago under the direction of Dr. Timothy Collier, studying the effects of inflammation on neural transplant and repair. As an Instructor in the Department of Neurological Sciences at Rush from 2001-2002, she first began to investigate the effect of diet on neural injury and repair. In 2002, Susan accepted an appointment as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology at Loyola University in Chicago where she continues to investigate the roles of diet and neuroinflammation in neurodegenerative conditions. She has served on the ASN YIEE committee for the past three years, becoming its chairperson this year. Susan also serves as the ASN representative to the ASN/ISN Travel Committee for the 2007 Cancun meeting.

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TIINA KAUPPINEN (maiden name Tikka) obtained a Ph.D. in Molecular Neuroscience (2001) and a M.Sc. in Biotechnology (1998) from the University of Kuopio, Finland under the guidance of Dr. Jari Koistinaho. Her Ph.D. studies discovered the neuroprotective potential of minocycline, an antibiotic that has several anti-inflammatory functions unrelated to its anti-microbial functions. In 2002 she continued her training at the University of California, San Francisco as a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Raymond Swanson. Since 2006, Tiina has been an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology at University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Kauppinen’s research centers on the role of specific molecular signaling and effector pathways in microglial activation and their downstream impact on neuroinflammation. Her current focus is on the role of poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase-1 (PARP-1) as a common pathway involved in neuroinflammation, neurodegeneration, and neurogenesis. Her long-term goal is elucidate the mechanisms underlying neuroinflammation and the role that these processes have in CNS ischemic injury and disease. Tiina has authored and coauthored sixteen peer-reviewed publications. Her research efforts are being supported by funds from the American Heart Association. Tiina is the recipient of the 2008 Jordi Folch-Pi Memorial Award from the ASN and has regularly participated ASN meetings by poster and oral presentations since 2005.

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DANA McTIGUE received her Ph.D. in Physiology with an emphasis on Neuroscience in 1998 from Ohio State University, where she also gained research experience in a large and well-established spinal cord injury research group as a post-doctoral fellow. She was recruited for a tenure track position in 2003 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Ohio State. Dana has had a long-time interest in oligodendrocyte progenitor cells and has examined their fate and function in the injured adult spinal cord using a variety of in vivo and in vitro models. She is specifically interested in how the injured milieu affects progenitor cell function and in determining if/how these cells contribute to endogenous repair processes following spinal cord injury. Her recent work revealed that progenitor cells indeed appear to play an important role in endogenous repair after spinal cord injury by contributing to robust oligodendrogenesis along lesion borders. Current work funded from NINDS and the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation is underway to investigate the mechanisms involved in this process. Dana has been an active member of ASN since 2003 and has regularly attended the annual meetings. In addition, she has presented in an ASN symposium and organized several scientific sessions for the meetings. Members of her laboratory also regularly attend and present at the meetings.

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VLAD PARPURA holds both a medical degree, awarded from the University of Zagreb in Croatia in 1989, and a doctorate, received in Neuroscience and Zoology from Iowa State University in 1993. He has held faculty appointments at the Department of Zoology and Genetics, Iowa State University and the Department of Cell Biology and Neuroscience, University of California Riverside. He is presently an Associate Professor in the Department of Neurobiology, University of Alabama Birmingham. Parpura’s current research focuses on understanding the modulation of calcium-dependent glutamate release from astrocytes. His research has been instrumental in demonstrating a novel functional role for these glial cells. Hence, astrocytes can exocytotically release the neurotransmitter glutamate and, in turn, that glutamate released from astrocytes can signal to adjacent neurons. Parpura has edited two books in the field of glial biology. He has joined the American Society for Neurochemistry in 2005. Since then he served as a member of the Program Committee (2006) and the Membership committee (2006-present), which he now chairs. Parpura co-organized with Drs. Carson and Ransom two Pre-meeting workshops (2006 and 2008). He also organized and chaired 1 symposium and 2 workshops at annual meetings and delivered 5 talks in various sessions. He has organized and will chair and speak in the workshop at the upcoming 2009 meeting.

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V. WEE YONG is a Professor at the Hotchkiss Brain Institute and the Departments of Clinical Neurosciences and Oncology at The University of Calgary. He received his Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, and started his faculty appointment at the Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, in 1989. Dr. Yong relocated to Calgary in 1996. Dr. Yong’s research interests lie in the area of neuroimmunology, neuroprotection and CNS regeneration. His scientific projects have been guided by 3 diseases: multiple sclerosis (MS), spinal cord injury and malignant gliomas. Dr. Yong has published over 160 peer-reviewed manuscripts and his research has been translated into clinical trials in MS and spinal cord injury. Dr. Yong co-directs the MS Program of the Hotchkiss Brain Institute at the University of Calgary. In 2003, Dr. Yong was awarded the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Year Medallion for volunteer activities on behalf of the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada. In 2004, Dr. Yong assumed the position of Canada Research Chair in Neuroimmunology. Dr. Yong currently chairs the Medical Advisory Committee of the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada and he sits on the International Advisory Board of the International Society of Neuroimmunology.

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