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April 4, 2002

Media Contact: Jan Jennings, (858) 822-1684

NEUROSCIENTIST/BIOENGINEER NAMED FACULTY RESEARCH LECTURER

Mark H. Ellisman, professor of neurosciences and bioengineering, has been selected as a 2001 Faculty Research Lecture Award recipient by the San Diego Division of the Academic Senate at the University of California, San Diego.

Ellisman will lecture on Multi-Scale Structure and Function in the Nervous System at 4 p.m. April 18 in Garren Auditorium of the Basic Science Building at the UCSD School of Medicine. The event is free and open to the public.

Ellisman’s research focuses on the three-dimensional visualization of cellular architecture inside the brain and peripheral nerve cells. According to Guy Perkins, UCSD assistant project neuroscientist, and Tom Deerinck, senior research associate, who together nominated Ellisman for the lectureship, Ellisman’s “investigations into the spatial distribution of some of the smallest components of nerve cells have revealed fundamental insights into how the brain and nervous system work.”

They describe Ellisman as “a pioneer in the field of telescience and particularly in developing the remote access to shared instrumentation, including high-performance computing, to give researchers across the world opportunities to better understand biological structures.”

In addition to his UCSD faculty duties, Ellisman is chief neuroscientist at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and thrust leader for neuroscience and interdisciplinary coordinator for the National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (NPACI). He serves as director of the Center for Research in Biological Structure, the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research, and the Neurosciences Laboratory for Neurocytology at UCSD.

Ellisman has published more than 200 research articles in journals such as Science and Cell; has authored 21 book chapters and contributed figures to 15 textbooks, and has shared his research with the layperson via contributions to magazines and newspapers, including Time, National Geographic, Scientific American, the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune. His research has been featured in television shows of the National Geographic Society, PBS, CNN, and the Discovery Channel.

Ellisman received a bachelor’s degree with honors from UC Berkeley, and a master’s degree in neurophysiology from the Department of Psychology and a Ph.D. in biology from the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He has been on the UCSD faculty since 1977.