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Heidi E. Hamm, Ph.D. is the Earl W. Sutherland, Jr., Professor and Chair of Pharmacology at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Hamm obtained her Ph.D. in Zoology with Prof. Michael Menaker in 1980 from the University of Texas-Austin and performed her postdoctoral training at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1980-1983 with Prof. M. Deric Bownds. Her initial research centered around circadian clocks and melatonin synthesis in the avian retina; her postdoctoral work investigated the role of transducin in visual transduction using blocking monoclonal antibodies. She held faculty appointments at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Medicine and Northwestern University before moving to Vanderbilt in 2000 to chair the Department of Pharmacology.
Dr. Hamm studies a specific mechanism of neuronal communication known as G protein signaling. G protein mediated signaling is a critical part of biological function in the brain and the other bodily systems. Because many pharmaceuticals are targeted to G protein signaling cascades, gaining a better understanding of their function is crucial to developing more efficient treatments and designing better drugs. Her research focuses on the structure and function of GTP binding proteins and the molecular mechanisms of signal transduction.
Dr. Hamm has received numerous awards, including the Glaxo Cardiovascular Discovery Award, two Distinguished Investigator Awards from the National Alliance for Research in Schizophrenia and Depression, the Faculty of the Year award from the University of Illinois College of Medicine, and the Stanley Cohen Award “For Research Bringing Diverse Disciplines, such as Chemistry or Physics, to Solving Biology’s Most Important Fundamental Problems” from Vanderbilt University in 2003. She gave the Fritz Lipmann Lecture at ASBMB in 2001. Dr. Hamm has served on the NIH Visual Sciences C Study Section, the NIH Reviewers Reserve, and the Board of Scientific Counselors, NHLBI. She has organized a number of national and international meetings including Keystone, FASEB, ASBMB and the Gordon Conference on Cyclic Nucleotides and Protein Phosphorylation in 1995. She is President of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; she previously served as the organization’s Secretary (1995-1998), and Program Chair in 1998. She has served on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Biochemistry, and Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science. She is currently a member of the Editorial Board of Molecular Pharmacology.
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