Leslie Satin, Ph.D.

Dr. Leslie Satin is a Professor of Pharmacology in the University of Michigan Medical School. Dr. Satin’s research has combined several strands, involving studies of the electrophysiology of neurons and synaptic changes after traumatic brain injury, the production of oscillations in neurosecretory cells and their theoretical basis, and the regulation of intracellular free Calcium and ion channels by cell fuel metabolism. Dr. Satin is an expert on the cellular signaling mechanisms, ion channel biophysics, the application of theoretical models to biomedical systems, and synaptic mechanisms of plasticity in the brain. He received his graduate training at the University of Southern California, where he studied neuromuscular physiology and the regulation of membrane calcium fluxes (1975-1982). After obtaining his Ph.D. in biology from UCLA, Dr. Satin moved to SUNY Stony Brook where he was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of P. R. Adams in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior. Dr. Satin’s work with Adams focused on potassium channel biophysics, an area of study he continued to pursue after moving to D. Cook’s lab at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. Dr. Satin was promoted to the rank of Research Assistant Professor of Physiology and Biophysics at UW in 1988. In 1990, he left Seattle to establish his own laboratory in Pharmacology and Toxicology at Virginia Commonwealth University (1990-2008). Dr. Satin gained recognition at VCU for his teaching and research excellence by winning annual teaching and research excellence awards given by the VCU School of Medicine. Dr. Satin joined the Department of Pharmacology at UMMS in 2008. Dr. Satin has published over 100 peer reviewed papers that have appeared in journals such as Science, J. Neuroscience, J. Neurotrauma, J. Neurophysiology, Nature Genetics, J. Biol. Chemistry, and J. Physiology (London). He has served on the editorial boards of Neurochemistry International, Endocrinology, Endocrine, Diabetes, J. Biol. Chem., and American Journal of Physiology. He has served on many NIH study sections, including those devoted to TBI and stroke, and diabetes and metabolic diseases.

Dr. Satin has completed a 4 year stint on the Biophysical Society Publications Committee. He has been appointed to the Biophysical Society-Institute of Physics Advisory Board to oversee the publication of a new series of e-books on Biophysics. He is a member of a BPS Working Group that will soon help launch a new education journal, The Biophysicist. He has been invited to present his research findings to the prestigious "Brehm Coalition on Type 1 diabetes" in Seattle in April.