Congratulations to Dr. Stephen F. Traynelis, Dean’s Eminent Investigator!
We are proud to announce that Dr. Stephen F. Traynelis, Professor Department of Pharmacology and Chemical Biology, has been named the prestigious Dean’s Eminent Investigator. Dr. Traynelis is one of only two distinguished investigators to receive this inaugural award from Emory University and the School of Medicine.
Dr. Traynelis joined the Emory faculty in 1994 where his ground breaking research since has greatly advanced our understanding of glutamate receptor function in the brain. His lab has developed multiple first-in-class series of selective NMDA receptor allosteric modulators with therapeutic potential for treating ischemic brain injury, schizophrenia, Parkinson’s Disease, epilepsy and other disorders. This led to the founding of NeurOp Inc and the development of neuroprotective agents currently being evaluated in clinical trials. Dr. Traynelis’ work to understand the functional consequences of genetic variation in glutamate receptor genes in healthy individuals and neurological patients have provided new insights into receptor function and genetic risk. These efforts led to the founding of a new Center at Emory that bridges the gap between genetic information on receptor variants and their functional and pharmacological consequences, laying the groundwork for precision medicine and the evaluation of novel treatment paradigms.
Dr. Traynelis also is a John Merck Scholar, an AAAS Fellow, an ASPET fellow, former editor-in-chief of Molecular Pharmacology, as well as recipient of an NIH Javits Award, a R35 Research Program Award, and the Hodgkin-Huxley-Katz Prize from the British Physiological Society. He is an author on over 200 peer-reviewed publications and is co-inventor on 7 US patents