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5th Annual Mariann Blum Memorial Lectureship in the Neurosciences March 28, 2008

Dr. Mariann Blum was a native Houstonian and biochemist who focused on how neurons damaged by Parkinson's Disease can be stimulated to survive or regenerate. Her scientific work also changed the way neuroscientists think about the brain. Her careful analysis of the levels of the growth-factor genes throughout the development of the brain found that levels actually were highest in the adult animal. This led to the observation that growth factors continued to be very important in the brain, even after it was fully formed. Blum published more than 60 peer-reviewed papers and reviews in her too-short scientific career, supervised five doctoral candidates, and trained more than 12 post-doctoral fellows and visiting faculty members.

Known to most of her friends as "Poco," she received a BS in biochemistry from the University of Texas at Austin in 1977. In 1982, she earned a doctorate in biochemistry at the UT Medical Branch in Galveston. In the same year, she enrolled in the Rockefeller University in New York as a post-doctoral student of the renowned neuroscientist, Dr. Bruce McEwen. Appointed to the adjunct faculty at Rockefeller, she also trained in molecular neurobiology in the laboratory of Dr. James Roberts at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Blum joined the faculty of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York in 1986 as an assistant professor in the Dr. Arthur M. Fishberg Research Center for Neurobiology. In 1993 she rose to the rank of associate professor with a secondary appointment in the Department of Geriatrics and Adult Development. In 2002, she became Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio with an appointment in the Audie L. Murphy Memorial Veterans Hospital. Throughout her career, her research was funded by grants from the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke and the National Institute of Aging.

Phyllis M. Wise, Ph.D., Provost and Executive Vice President, University of Washington, was the featured speaker at the 5th Annual Mariann Blum Memorial Lectureship in the Nuerosciences. Her seminar was entitled, Estrogens: Their complex role in protecting the brain against neurodegeneration.

Dr. Wise became Provost and Executive Vice President at the University of Washington on August 1, 2005. She is also a professor of Physiology and Biophyics, Biology, and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Washington and previously served as Dean of the College of Biological Sciences at the University of California at Davis from 2002-2005. Wise continues an active research program in issues concerning women's health and gender-based biology. She has been particularly interested in whether hormones influence brains of women and men during development, during adulthood and during aging. She has been involved in the discussion of whether males and females have different strategies in learning and memory and whether this may make them more suited for some careers as opposed to others. She has been continuously funded by the NIH and has received two MERIT Awards, which provide funding for innovative research over a 10-year period of time.