Symposia Speakers

Jeffrey Tasker received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado in 1981 with majors in biology and French, and his doctorate in the neurosciences from the University of Bordeaux, France in 1986. He received postdoctoral training in the Department of Physiology at the Tulane Medical School from 1986-87 and in the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute Mental Retardation Research Center from 1987-91. He joined the Tulane Department of Cell and Molecular Biology as an assistant professor in 1991 and was promoted to associate professor in 1998 and professor in 2002, and was awarded the Catherine and Hunter Pierson Chair in Neuroscience in 2005. He has been supported continuously by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation since 1993. He was interim chairman of the Cell and Molecular Biology Department in 2007-08, was director of the Tulane University Neuroscience Program from 2006 through 2015, and currently serves on the Executive Committee of the Tulane Brain Institute. He serves annually on various NIH and NSF grant review panels and is associate editor or review editor on several journal editorial boards. His research employs patch clamp electrophysiology, cell and molecular biology, genetics, and behavioral analyses to study circuit, electrical and molecular signaling of neurons and glia in the rodent hypothalamus and basolateral amygdala involved in stress and trauma, with the goal of understanding the role of neurophysiological and neuropathological mechanisms of stress homeostasis and plasticity in depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder.