History and Overview

The UAB Department of Neurobiology was founded in 1996. The Department was formed from the University's successful Neurobiology Research Center that was established in 1986. It is one of eight Joint Health Science departments in the UAB Schools of Medicine and Dentistry. As of 2004, the Department currently has 9 primary faculty members complemented by a diverse secondary faculty. Evidence of the faculty's substantial national and international impact in fundamental Neuroscience research includes: their substantial number of publications in high impact journals; appointment to editorial boards of leading Neuroscience journals; appointment to NIH and NSF study sections; award of over 8 million dollars in annual federal research grant funds; award of an NIH Training Grant in Neuroscience; research program awards from several major national foundations including the Lucille P. Markey Foundation, the C. W. Keck Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Evelyn F. McKnight Brain research Foundation; and numerous invitations to speak at national and international research symposia including several Gordon Conferences. Two faculty member have been U.S. Congress Javits Neuroscience award recipients; one served on the Howard Hughes Medical Institute fellowship board; one has received a prestigious Goldhirsh Foundation award another has received the American College of Physicians Menninger Award for mental health research.

Research and Training

In addition to its major research emphasis, the departmental faculty are actively involved in training 41 graduate students in the Neurobiology PhD Program (poster of 2004-2005 Neurobiology Graduate Students in PDF format), and 16 postdoctoral fellows. The Neurobiology Graduate Program's mission is to train a new generation of neuroscientists who have the breadth of training in the fundamentals of modern neurobiological research ranging from molecular to systems' approaches and depth of training in particular areas so as to enable them to become leading contributors to the health-related brain research enterprise. Interested students also have the opportunity to receive advanced training in neurobiology of disease with a focus on modern molecular research approaches to clinical topics related to Neurology, Neurosurgery, Psychiatry, Pediatrics and Rehabilitation Medicine, thus providing a unique perspective for fundamental neuroscience research and teaching careers at academic health science centers. The faculty participate substantially in teaching of the campus-wide graduate Neuroscience curriculum and in the interdepartmental Cellular and Molecular Biology (CMB) graduate program. Students are admitted to the department's Neurobiology Ph.D. Program through one of the three interdisciplinary training programs - Neuroscience, CMB or the combined MD/Ph.D. program.

Facilities

The Department of Neurobiology is housed in 30,000 square feet of custom-designed laboratory and office space in the Civitan International Research Center. This location provides unique opportunities for collaborative research with other molecular biologists and physiologists as well as a strong group of clinical investigators involved in mental retardation, pediatric neurology, neural injury rehabilitation and molecular psychiatry research. The Neurobiology laboratories are well-equipped, state of the art facilities including full instrumentation for patch-clamp electrophysiology, high resolution cellular imaging, FRET, cell culture, a broad range of recombinant technologies including "gene gun,"viral transfection and transgenic approaches, molecular biology, and electron, single and two-photon laser scanning confocal microscopy. The Department also maintains a library with current issues of most leading Neurobiology journals.