Gina R. Poe, Ph.D.

Administrative Accomplishments 

I serve a 4 year term on the NIH’s NINDS Council 2020-present (term ending summer 2024). I have directed the SFN NSP since 2013 together with Julio Ramirez, Ph.D. and now with Eduardo Rosa-Molinar and Karina Alvina. At UCLA I have been named the next Director of the Brain Research Institute uniting and serving over 300 neuroscientists at UCLA and brining their science to light.  

Degree, Institute, Year Earned

Current Position(s) at Your Current Institution

• Professor, Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology, Department of Psychiatry, and Department of Neurobiology
• Chair, Lorre Scholars Program
• Director Brain Research Institute, UCLA

Memberships

Service Positions

Editorial Boards:

Other Service Positions:

Science Biography

Dr. Poe received her PhD in Neuroscience from UCLA studying sleep and respiration in Ron Harper’s lab, then moved to Carol Barne’s lab working on her graceful degradation hypothesis of aging and the mechanisms by which sleep serves to consolidate memories and clear synaptic space for additional learning. She also assisted Brue McNaughton and James Kneirim in studying how rats code for 3D space in the 0-G environment of space. In her first faculty position at Washington State University she Directed the first Neuroscience undergraduate major, established her lab, and earned an R01 grant from the NIMH called REM sleep and memory which she has renewed for over 20 years. Moving to the University of Michigan Departments of Anesthesiology and Molecular and Integrative Physiology for 16 years, Dr. Poe trained 8 postdoctoral scholars, 8 graduate students, and over 80 undergraduate students in her laboratory and served on the faculty senate and the Senate Advisory Committee for University Affairs. She also served on the NIH’s Sleep Disorders Research Advisory Board, the Board of the Sleep Research Society, and the Learning and Memory NIH review study section. For the Society for Neuroscience Dr. Poe served on the Women in Neuroscience committee, the Professional Development Committee (2010 – Present), and became co-Director of the Neuroscience Scholars Program. In 2016 Dr. Poe moved her laboratory and family to UCLA as full Professor and Director of the MARC program, the COMPASS Life Sciences Program, and the Brain Research Institute’s Summer Undergraduate Research Experience. She also ran the summer course called SPINES at the Marine Biological Institute for 7 years (2017-2023) and currently serves as endowed Chair of the Lorre Scholars program at UCLA. She served 7 years on the Brain Research institute’s Steering Committee and the Neuroscience Theme Committee. In 2022 she won the UCLA Chancellor’s and Faculty Senate Distinguished Teaching Award. She has served on the editorial board of four journals, many grant review and selection committees, her department’s promotions committee, and 6 faculty search committees. She has appeared talking about science and sleep on NOVA, Netflix, and many podcasts such as Andrew Huberman and Mel Robbins. In addition to her own work on mechanisms for learning and memory consolidation during sleep, she is passionate about welcoming diverse talents to the hard problems we are tackling in neuroscience and bringing the fun and wonder of neuroscience to the public.

The full CV for this candidate can be found within the ballot.