Dr. Anthony-Samuel LaMantia Appointed Founding Director of Multidisciplinary Research Institute
Newswise — The George Washington University announced today that it has established a new Institute for Neuroscience. The institute, which is housed in GW’s School of Medicine and Health Sciences, will accelerate multidisciplinary research across GW’s schools and establish a new core facility for Neuroscience studies. Anthony-Samuel LaMantia, Ph.D., an internationally renowned neuroscientist formerly at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will serve as the institute’s founding director.
The institute was established to create a unified base for Neuroscience research at GW, maximizing scientific efforts and interactions among faculty, post-doctoral fellows, and students at GW’s Foggy Bottom campus and at Children’s National Medical Center.
“I recognized a remarkable opportunity in GW’s commitment to build integrative, translational neuroscience on the Foggy Bottom campus and deepen its partnership with Children’s National Medical Center,” LaMantia said. “I look forward to helping bring together new colleagues and diverse perspectives to address fundamental questions about the brain, how it develops, and how it works.”
The institute plans to advance research through five key functions. First, it will sponsor a Neuroscience Seminar Series featuring prominent national speakers as well as GW faculty members. Second, the institute will organize a new graduate course in the neurobiology of developmental disorders. Third, it will serve as a central organizing mechanism for initiating multi-investigator projects. Fourth, it will coordinate with the Departments of Pharmacology and Physiology, Biology, and Psychology to recruit four new faculty members in the neurosciences. Finally, the institute will provide a new Web site that presents members’ research interests and events of interest to the Neuroscience community.
“The Institute for Neuroscience represents a major step forward in our efforts to expand our research enterprise at GW,” said Vice President for Research Leo Chalupa. “It’s critical for us to have a collection of scientists who will conduct outstanding research on the most challenging issues that affect the human brain, and we are fortunate to have someone of Dr. LaMantia’s stature in the field of neuroscience to lead the institute,” Chalupa said.
In addition, the institute will establish a new core facility, the Biomarkers Discovery and Analysis Core, to support research efforts across the GW Neuroscience community and beyond. The Core will offer high through-put quantitative PCR as well as relevant cDNA libraries, facilities for plate-based cell signaling assays, facilities for in vitro electroporation of DNA constructs and primary culture, mouse ES cell lines for in vitro differentiation, and an in situ hybridization service that offers standard brain sections for expression surveys, as well as a library of over 300 cloned probe templates, custom probe template construction and probe synthesis.
Currently, the institute includes 24 faculty members, whose research interests include behavioral, evolutionary, systems, cellular, and developmental Neuroscience. The School of Medicine and Health Sciences, the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, and the Office of the Vice President for Research jointly support the institute’s programs.
John Williams, M.D., Ed.D., M.P.H., vice president for health affairs at GW Medical Center said, “The new Institute for Neuroscience reflects the spirit of collaboration that is essential in today’s scientific research. By combining the talents of our faculty from the School of Medicine and Health Sciences, the Departments of Biology and Psychology at the University, and the Children’s National Medical Center, the institute can produce cutting-edge research that may answer the most difficult questions in the neurosciences.”
About The George Washington University Medical CenterThe George Washington University Medical Center is an internationally recognized interdisciplinary academic health center that has consistently provided high-quality medical care in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area since 1824. The Medical Center comprises the School of Medicine and Health Sciences, the 11th oldest medical school in the country; the School of Public Health and Health Services, the only such school in the nation’s capital; GW Hospital, jointly owned and operated by a partnership between The George Washington University and a subsidiary of Universal Health Services, Inc.; and The GW Medical Faculty Associates, an independent medical practice with nearly 550 physicians in 47 clinical specialties. For more information on GWUMC, visit www.gwumc.edu.
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