JEFFERSON SYNAPTIC BIOLOGY SYMPOSIUM
Dr. Irwin Levitan
Professor and former Chair of the Department of Neuroscience and also the former Director of the Farber Institute for Neurosciences at Thomas Jefferson University. Dr. Levitan received his undergraduate, Masters and PhD degrees in biochemistry from McGill University, Montreal, Canada. After postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, and the University of California at San Diego, he was a group leader at the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Basel, Switzerland where he began investigations of the regulation of neuronal excitability in the marine mollusc Aplysia. Subsequently, at Brandeis University, he began investigating the modulation of ion channel proteins, using a combination of molecular and biophysical approaches. He continued with these approaches as Chair of the Department of Neuroscience at the University Of Pennsylvania School Of Medicine and now at Thomas Jefferson University. His laboratory studies the molecular mechanisms that nerve cells use to modulate the activity of individual ion channels, and their contribution to long term changes in neuronal function and ultimately in behavior.. Dr. Levitan is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including two successive National Institutes of Health Jacob Javits Neuroscience Investigator Awards and two awards from the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience.
Organizing Committee
Dr. Matthew Dalva, Dr. Elena Blanco-Suárez, Dr. Chang-Gyu Hahn, Dr. Le Ma.
