Английская Википедия:A. Kimberley McAllister

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A. Kimberley McAllister is an American cellular and molecular neuroscientist who specializes in synapse biology and neuroimmunology. She is director of the Center for Neuroscience and a Professor of Neurology and Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior at the University of California, Davis. She is also an affiliate member of the UC Davis MIND Institute,Шаблон:Need Citation the UC Davis Center for Neuroengineering and Medicine,Шаблон:Need Citation and the UC Davis Institute for Psychedelics and Neurotherapeutics.

Early life

McAllister grew up in Great Falls, Virginia. She was inspired to pursue biology through internships with Mr. John Trott, an ornithologist and botanist, who was her teacher at the Langley SchoolШаблон:Need Citation for middle school and also at the Madeira SchoolШаблон:Need Citation for high school (1980–1984). She obtained her B.S. in Biology from Davidson CollegeШаблон:Need Citation in 1988, graduating cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.

McAllister pursued neurobiology research at Duke University,Шаблон:Need Citation first as a technician in the laboratory of Dr. Anthony LaMantiaШаблон:Need Citation and then as a graduate student starting in 1992 in the laboratory of the late Lawrence C. Katz. She obtained her Ph.D. in neurobiology in 1996.Шаблон:Need Citation

Academic career

As a Ph.D. student at Duke University, McAllister was trained as a developmental neurobiologist by Lawrence C. Katz and Donald C. Lo and studied the role for neurotrophins in regulating dendritic growth of pyramidal neurons in the developing visual cortex. During that time, she adapted biolistic transfection for use in transfecting neurons in organotypic slices. This new approach transformed the field of neurobiology by allowing rapid and reliable transfection of neurons and laid the groundwork for the rapidly expanding fields of synaptic plasticity and dendritic growth.Шаблон:Need Citation

For postdoctoral training, McAllister worked in Charles F. Stevens’ Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory at the Salk Institute from 1997–1999. She optimized a technique to record synaptic transmission at single, identified synapses in cultured neurons and discovered fundamental principles of synaptic transmission. During the summer of 1998, she was a Grass Fellow in Neurophysiology at the Marine Biology Laboratory at Woods Hole, where she obtained some of the first data showing that synaptic proteins are mobile in axons before synapses are formed.

McAllister moved to the nascent Center for Neuroscience at the University of California, Davis in 2000 to establish her independent laboratory. Her research focuses on understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms of brain development. Through pioneering time-lapse imaging approaches to study protein transport before and during synapse formation, her team made seminal discoveries about the initial mechanisms of synapse formation. Her lab also studies how “immune” molecules, such as major histocompatibility complex I molecules and cytokines, regulate the initial establishment of synaptic connections during brain development as well as contribute to synapse loss in Alzheimer’s disease. Finally, McAllister’s team has led efforts to improve reproducibility in rodent models of maternal immune activation (MIA). Through the interdisciplinary Conte Center that she co-directs, her group has identified biomarkers in female mice before pregnancy and following MIA during gestation that predict susceptibility and resilience to schizophrenia- and autism-related behavioral and neurochemical alterations in offspring.

Service

McAllister has been director of the Center for Neuroscience at UC Davis since 2016 after serving as Associate Director from 2013–2016. She has led multiple interdisciplinary research efforts, including launching the UC Davis Neuroscience Consortium. McAllister is an Associate Editor at Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience and served as an Associate Editor for Physiological Reviews (2020–2023) and Journal of Neuroscience (2007–2013).

McAllister currently serves as a member of the finance committee for the Society for Neuroscience and previously served on the Young Investigator Award Committee (2015–2017) and the Program Committee (2002–2005). She is also currently a member of the Program Committee for the American Society for Neurochemistry and was previously a member of the Pew Scholar Alumni Review Board (2013– 2023) and the Scientific Advisory Boards of Autism Speaks (2008–2014) and the Brain Research Foundation (2009–2013).

Teaching

McAllister has trained 10 predoctoral and 13 postdoctoral fellows, as well as more than 60 undergraduates and 13 post-bacs. She has taught courses for both undergraduates and graduate students and is also the founding director of the UC Davis Learning, Memory, and Plasticity (LaMP) Training Program funded by a T32 grant from the National Institutes for Mental Health since 2016.

Awards and honors

• Basil O’Connor Starter Scholar Award, March of Dimes (2001–2003)
• Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2001–2003)
• Pew Foundation Scholar Award (2001–2005)
• John Merck Scholars Award (2003–2007)
• NARSAD Independent Investigator Award (2005–2007)
• Society for Neuroscience Young Investigator Award (2006)
• UC Davis Chancellor’s Fellow Award (2007)
• UC Davis Neuroscience Program Service Award (2011)
• UC Davis RISE (Research Investments in Science and Engineering) Award (2012)
• UC Davis Foundation Faculty and Staff Stewardship Award (2022)