Biography
Debora B. Farber is a biochemist and molecular biologist who has been a faculty member of the UCLA School of Medicine since she joined the Department of Ophthalmology in 1977. She became a full professor in 1984, a Karl Kirchgessner Endowed Chair in 2001 and a Distinguished Professor in 2007. She has been Associate Director for Research of the Brain Research Institute (1992 -1994) and Associate Director of the Jules Stein Eye Institute as well as Co-Chief of its Vision Science Division (1994 – 2004). Dr. Farber earned her M.S. in Chemistry and her Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. She was a postdoctoral fellow in the Chemistry Department, University of California at Santa Barbara, where she studied the cyclic nucleotide regulation of different processes. She started working on the retina and diseases affecting it when she joined UCLA, and soon thereafter she received a National Eye Institute Research Career Development Award. In addition to her continued support from NIH, Dr. Farber also was granted an NIH MERIT Award. She received the highest honorary degree, Doctor Honoris Causa, from the University of Göteborg, Sweden, the Proctor Medal from the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, and the “Marraine 2005” honorary title from L’Association Degenerescence Maculaire Liee a l’Age, France. She also was the recipient of the Louisiana State University School of Medicine Distinguished Lecturer Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Neurosciences, the Alcon Research Institute Award for Outstanding Contributions to Vision Research, The Foundation Fighting Blindness Trustee Award, the Paul Kayser International Award of Merit in Retina Research, two Research to Prevent Blindness Senior Scientific Investigators Awards and the Visionary Award from The Vision of Children Foundation. UCLA granted Dr. Farber the Woman of Science Award, the Franklin D. Murphy, M.D. Prize from the UCLA School of Medicine and the David Geffen School of Medicine MAA Medical Science Award. She is an Editorial Board member of several journals and has given Plenary lectures at national and international meetings. She also was elected Trustee and Vice-President of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology.
Biography
Dr. Fuligni received his Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology at the University of Michigan and was previously an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at New York University. His work has been funded by a FIRST award from NICHD, a Faculty Scholars Award from the William T. Grant Foundation, the Mac Arthur Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Haynes Foundation. Fuligni is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and was a recipient of the American Psychological Association’s Boyd McCandless Award for Early Career Contribution to Developmental Psychology. He currently is Co-Director of the NIMH Family Research Consortium IV and was an associate member of the Mac Arthur Network on Middle Childhood and the Russell Sage Foundation Working Group on Social Identity and Institutional Engagement. Fuligni was a member of the Executive Committee of the Society for Research on Adolescence, and has served on the editorial boards of Child Development, Developmental Psychology, and the Journal of Research on Adolescence. He currently is an Associate Editor of Child Development.
Biography
Guoping Fan is a Professor in the Department of Human Genetics, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He has been a faculty member at UCLA since 2001. Pior to that, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Institute/MIT, where he studies the role of DNA methylation and neurotrophins in neural development. Dr. Fan earned his B.S. in Biochemistry at Nanjing University, China and Ph.D. in Neuroscience at Case Western Reserve University. His current research focuses on the actions of DNA methylation and chromatin-remodeling in regulating neural gene expression, neuronal function, and stem cell differentiation and reprogramming.