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Jordi Folch-Pi Memorial Award for 1997

Dr. Peter Baas

Dr. Peter Baas

Dr. Peter W. Baas was the winner of the 1997 Jordi-Folch-Pi Memorial Award. Dr. Baas's research focuses on the mechanisms that organize and regulate the microtubule arrays of neurons during development and disease. To study these mechanisms, Dr. Baas uses a variety of cellular, molecular, and live-cell techniques. These techniques include novel approaches to light and electron microscopy, genetic manipulation of individual cells, and the use of fluorescent probes to image the behaviors of microtubules within living neurons. Notably, his work suggests that the mechanisms that establish the microtubule arrays of the neuron are modifications of the same mechanisms that organize microtubules within the mitotic spindle of dividing cells. We now know, from Dr. Baas's work, that molecular motor proteins that configure microtubules in the mitotic spindle have analogous roles in configuring microtubules in the neuron. Dr. Baas also studies microtubule-severing proteins, which are critical both for the mitotic spindle and the regulation of microtubule lengths in the neuron. This work has broken significant new ground in the field of developmental neuroscience, and has provided information that is required to resolve critical issues related to a variety of neurodegenerative disorders. Dr. Baas earned his PhD at Michigan State University in 1987, under the supervision of Dr. Steve Heidemann. From there, he was an NIH-funded postdoctoral fellow at Temple University for 3 years, under the supervision of Dr. Mark Black. He obtained his first faculty position at University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1990, and is currently a Professor in the Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy at Drexel University (since 2000), where he is also Director of the Graduate Program in Neuroscience. He was the recipient of a Research Career Development Award from NIH in 1992, and has been continuously funded by NIH for his entire faculty career. He also has been periodically funded by NSF and various foundations dedicated to curing neurodegenerative disorders.