Dr. Scott
T. Brady
Dr. Scott T. Brady was the winner of the 1988 Jordi-Folch-Pi Memorial Award. Dr. Brady received his undergraduate training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA, where he earned bachelor’s degrees in both Physics and Biology in 1973. He went to the University of Southern California to earn a Ph.D. in Cell and Molecular Biology in 1978, where he began his studies on the mechanisms of axonal transport in the laboratory of Dr. William McClure. Dr. Brady then moved to Case Western Reserve University for postdoctoral training in Neuroscience with Dr. Raymond Lasek from 1978-1981. He remained at CWRU as a research faculty member in the Department of Anatomy until 1985, then moved to the Department of Cell Biology at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. He remained in Dallas until 2001 when he moved to the University of Illinois at Chicago where he is currently Professor and Head of the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology.
In the early 1980’s, he began spending summers at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA where he used live cell imaging to study fast axonal transport. In collaboration with Drs. Robert Allen and Ray Lasek, he developed a novel preparation to study transport based on digital microscopy of isolated axoplasm from the squid giant axon. Using these methods, Dr. Brady first showed that fast axonal transport depended on a new class of molecular motors and was one of the discoverers of the kinesin family of molecular motors. Subsequently, Dr. Brady’s research has focused cell and molecular biology of kinesins in neurons, making significant contributions to our understanding of the structure, regulation and molecular biology of the kinesins. His current research includes a focus on the role that axonal transport and regulation of molecular motors play in adult-onset neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease.
Read the National Acadamy of Sciences' biographical memoir of Jordi Folch-Pi by Marjorie B. Lees and Alfred Pope.
Created 3/23/2008 SL