2019 Jefferson
Synaptic Biology Symposium

Speakers:

Short talks to be chosen from submitted abstracts.

Reception to follow.

RICHARD HUGANIR

Rick Huganir completed his undergraduate work in biochemistry at Vassar College and received his Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry, Molecular and Cell Biology from Cornell University, where he did his thesis research in the laboratory of Efraim Racker. After a postdoctoral fellowship in Paul Greengard's laboratory at Yale University School of Medicine, Rick joined the faculty of Rockefeller University, where he was an Assistant Professor of Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience. He is currently Professor and Director of the Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience and Professor of Biological Chemistry at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Co-Director of the Johns Hopkins Brain Science Institute, Director of the Kavli Neuroscience Discovery Institute, and President of the Society for Neuroscience.

In 2019, he won the Edward M. Skolnick Prize from the McGovern Institute at MIT for “his role in understanding the molecular and biochemical underpinnings of ‘synaptic plasticity,’ changes at synapses that are key to learning and memory formation.:”

~ From the Huganir Lab website (http://neuroscience.bs.jhmi.edu/huganir/rickhuganir.html)

THOMAS SÜDHOF

Thomas Christian Südhof was born in Göttingen, Germany, on Dec. 22 in 1955, and obtained his M.D. and doctoral degrees from the University of Göttingen in 1982. He performed his doctoral thesis work at the Max-Planck-Institut für biophysikalische Chemie in Göttingen with Prof. Victor P. Whittaker on the biophysical structure of secretory granules. From 1983-1986, Südhof trained as a postdoctoral fellow with Drs. Mike Brown and Joe Goldstein at UT Southwestern in Dallas, TX, and elucidated the structure, expression and cholesterol-dependent regulation of the LDL receptor.

Südhof began his independent career as an assistant professor at UT Southwestern in 1986. When Südhof started his laboratory, he decided to switch from cholesterol metabolism to neuroscience, and to pursue a molecular characterization of synaptic transmission. His work initially focused on the mechanism of neurotransmitter release which is the first step in synaptic transmission, and whose molecular basis was completely unknown in 1986. Later on, Südhof's work increasingly turned to the analysis of synapse formation and specification, processes that mediate the initial assembly of synapses, regulate their maintenance and elimination, and determine their properties. Südhof served on the faculty of UT Southwestern in Dallas until 2008, and among others was the founding chair of the Department of Neuroscience at that institution. In 2008, Südhof moved to Stanford, and became the Avram Goldstein Professor in the School of Medicine at Stanford University. In addition, Südhof has been an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1986.

In 2013, Südhof (with James Rothman and Randy Schekman) won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for “their discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport system in our cells.”

~ From the Südhof lab website (https://med.stanford.edu/sudhoflab/about-thomas-sudhof.html)

SHERNAZ BAMJI

Shernaz Bamji is a professor in the Department of Cellular and Physiological Sciences, Member of the Brain Research Center, and Head of the LSI Neuroscience Research Group at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. She received her Ph.D. from the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill University, working with Dr. Freda Miller. Following, she was a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Louis Reichardt at the University of California, San Francisco. She joined the faculty of UBC in 2005. She is a CIHR New Investigator, an MSFHR Scholar, and current serves on the Program Committee for the Society for Neuroscience. The overall research goals of the Bamji Lab are:

- To understand how synaptic connections in the brain are formed, remodeled and eliminated; 
- To determine how synaptic connections are impacted in the diseased brain; 
- To further our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying learning and behaviour.

Synapses of the central nervous system are highly specialized regions of cell-cell contact designed to rapidly and efficiently relay signals from one neuron to another. By establishing a dynamic yet precise network of synaptic connections, the brain is able to attain a level of functional complexity that enables not only simple motor tasks, but also sophisticated emotional and cognitive behaviour. The study of how synapses form and function is therefore essential to our ultimate understanding of higher brain functions such as learning and memory. Synapses of the CNS are continuously formed, remodeled and eliminated over the life of an organism. It has been suggested that perturbation of these processes may contribute to the etiology of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease, as well as developmental and psychiatric diseases including autism and schizophrenia.

~ From the Bamji Lab website (https://www.bamjilab.com)