Recent News

 

  • (2024) Dr. Bruce Herring was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor of Biological Sciences with tenure. Congratulations Dr. Herring!

  • (2024) Dr. Emily Liman was appointed as the Harold Dornsife Chair in Neurosciences. Congratulations Dr. Liman!

 

 

 

 

  • Selected news from previous years

    • (2018) Dr. Emily Liman’s lab discovers a new family of proton channels in taste cells. Of the five basic tastes, sour is one of the most mysterious. Now, in a groundbreaking paper published in Science, the Liman lab reports that by sorting through genes expressed in sour taste cells, they have identified one, Otop1, that encodes a proton channel and is a candidate to be the sour receptor. Otop1 is just one of a family of genes, many of which encode proton channels, and which are expressed throughout the body, including in the vestibular and digestive systems. Graduate student Yu-Hsiang Tu was lead author on the paper.
    • (2015) Dr. Dion Dickman has been named as a 2015 Klingenstein-Simons Neuroscience Fellow.
    • (2014) $9.7M R01 awarded to USC faculty Drs. Don Arnold, Scott Fraser & Carl Kesselman. The five-year $9.7 million award for a project titled Dynamic mapping of the complete synaptome using recombinant probes will allow researchers to explore how the brain stores information. The experiments will use probes developed by the Arnold laboratory, in collaboration with Dr. Richard Roberts from the Department of Chemistry at USC Dornsife, to light up synapses in living animals.
    • (2014) Dr. Dion Dickman was awarded a three year, $180,000 grant from the Mallinkrodt Foundation.
    • (2014) Dr. Andrew Hires was awarded a 4-year $189,000 grant from the US-Isreal Binational Science Foundation to study neural coding in layer 4 of somatosensory cortex, in collaboration with Drs. David Golomb and Karel Svoboda.
    • (2014) Dr. Dion Dickman was awarded a three year, $225,000 grant from the Whitehall Foundation.
    • (2014) Dr. Dion Dickman was named a Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellow.
    • (2014) Dr. Alan Watts has been elected President of the International Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior.
    • (2014) We are proud to announce the newest member of the Section of Neurobiology! Dr. S. Andrew Hires will be joining the faculty in 2014. Welcome Dr. Hires!
    • (2012) Dr. Don Arnold has received the 2012 McKnight Technological Innovations in Neuroscience Award. The award supports scientists working on new and unusual approaches to understanding brain function. The program seeks to advance and enlarge the range of technologies available to the neurosciences and supports research based primarily on new techniques.
    • (2012) Dr. Dion Dickman was awarded a 2012 New Scholar Award in Aging from the Ellison Medical Foundation. Dr. Dickman will investigate the genetics and mechanisms behind nervous system stability during the aging process.
    • (2012) Dr. Judith Hirsch was promoted to Full Professor. Congratulations Dr. Hirsch!
    • (2012) Dr. Larry Swanson was named a Provost Professor. Congratulations Dr. Swanson!
    • (2011) Neurobiology Scientist targets genetic cause of infant mortality. The disease is heartbreaking. It turns babies into ragdolls and extinguishes lives just as they are getting started. But USC’s Dr. Chien-Ping Ko is working to unravel the mystery behind the leading genetic cause of infant mortality, uncovering how Spinal Muscular Atrophy disconnects muscles from the mind.
    • (2011) Dr. Chien-Ping Ko will be one of the Keynote Speakers at the 2011 SMA Symposium at SFN entitled “Pretzels and endplates: Motor neuron pathology and the role of SMN in motor neuron development”.
    • (2011) Recent work from Dr. Chien-Ping Ko’s lab on treatments for ALS was highlighted in reports by both the Alzheimer Research Forum and the Muscular Dystrophy Association
    • (2011) We are proud to announce the newest member of the Section of Neurobiology! Dr. Dion Dickman will be joining the faculty in 2012. Welcome Dr. Dickman!
    • (2011) Dr. Larry Swanson has been elected as the 2012-13 President of the Society for Neuroscience. Congratulations Larry!
    • (2010) Dr. David McKemy was awarded was awarded the USC College of Letters, Arts & Sciences Albert S. Raubenheimer Outstanding Junior Faculty Award.
    • (2010) Sour Research, Sweet Results. In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, Dr. Emily Liman reveals the physiology behind all the puckering — how people taste sour.
    • (2010) Sparkling drinks spark pain circuits. The carbon dioxide in fizzy drinks triggers the same pain sensors in the nasal cavity as mustard and horseradish, according to a new study by Dr. Emily Liman.
    • (2010) When do newborns first feel cold? A new study by Dr.David McKemy shows that cold sensing neural circuits in newborn mice take around two weeks to become fully active.
    • (2010) Dr. Larry Swanson elected to the NAS. Larry Swanson, Professor of Biological Sciences, has been newly elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for his work on the organization of neural networks that control motivated behavior.
    • (2010) It’s Tweet as Can Be! Dr. Sarah Bottjer published a study showing that a neural circuit in the basal ganglia is necessary for normal development of “syntax” (temporal sequence) but not “phonology” of learned vocal sounds.
    • (2010) Professor Richard F. Thompson received a Gold Medal Award from the American Psychological Foundation.

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