Dr. Kelsey Martin is Dean of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA as well as a professor of biological chemistry, psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences. Her research focuses on the cell biology of transcription-dependent forms of synaptic plasticity, particularly those underlying learning and memory.
Martin received her undergraduate degree in English from Harvard University and an MD and Ph.D. in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University. She earned her post-doctoral degree in neurobiology at Columbia University.
Starting her career as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and Department of Biological Chemistry, Martin later became an Associate Professor, a full professor, and eventually, Chair of the Department of Biological Chemistry. She has served on several advisory panels, as an NIH study section member in Neurodifferentiation, Plasticity, Repair and Rhythms (NDPRR), a McKnight Scholar Award in Neuroscience Selection Committee member, and a Burroughs-Wellcome Career Award in Medical Sciences Selection Committee member. She has also served on the Editorial Board for Frontiers in Synaptic Neuroscience and Cell.
Martin has also been Co-Director of the summer course on “The Biology of Memory,” at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a Vice-chair and Chair of the Gordon Research Conference on Cell Biology of the Neuron, and Co-Chair, EMBO-FASEB meeting on Intracellular RNA Localization and Localized Translation. She has received many honors, including the NARSAD Young Investigator Award, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award in the Biomedical Sciences, the Klingenstein Fellowship in the Neurosciences, the McKnight Scholar Award, the W.M. Keck Foundation Distinguished Young Scholars in Medical Research Program Award, the Daniel X. Freedman Award of the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, Jordi Folch-Pi Award from the American Society of Neurochemistry, the EJLB Foundation Scholar Award, the Eleanor Leslie Term Chair in Innovative Brain Research from UCLA, the NARSAD Independent Investigator Award, the UCLA Dean’s Recognition Award, and the UCLA Society for Postdoctoral Scholars Postdoctoral Mentoring Award.
