Jordi Folch-Pi Memorial Award for 2001
Dr. Kelsey Martin
Dr. Kelsey Martin
Jordi Folch-Pi Memorial Award for 2001
Dr. Kelsey Martin
Dr. Kelsey Martin
Dr. Martin's research interests lie in understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying learning-related synaptic plasticity. To study these questions she uses two experimental models of learning-related synaptic plasticity: long-term facilitation of the sea slug Aplysia sensory-motor synapses and long-term potentiation of rodent hippocampal synapses. As a relatively young investigator she has done ground-breaking work in several areas including the role of synaptotagmin as a negative regulator of transmitter release, and determining how MAP kinase and PKA act in the nucleus to regulate gene expression and in the cytoplasm to produce changes in the strength and structure of synapses Dr. Martin received her B.A. in English from Harvard University, spent two years in the Peace Corps in Zaire, obtained her M.D. and Ph.D. from Yale, and performed postdoctoral work with Eric Kandel at Columbia. She is now an Assistant Professor in the Neuropsychiatric Institute at UCLA. As one of her referees put it--"her work has already altered the way that the international neuroscience community thinks about synaptic plasticity, leading many people-for the first time-to view the synapse as a distinct and important compartment for gene regulation at the translational level. No one who knows Kelsey doubts that she will emerge as one of her generation's leading neuroscientists."
Read the National Acadamy of Sciences' biographical memoir of Jordi Folch-Pi by Marjorie B. Lees and Alfred Pope.