Symposia Speakers

Susan Wray received her B.A. degree from Middlebury College and her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from University of Rochester School of Medicine & Dentistry. Her graduate work was on the postnatal development of neuroendocrine systems associated with reproduction. She continued her work on neuroendocrine systems as a postdoctoral fellow in NICHD, NIH where she discovered the nasal origin of GnRH cells which expanded her research interest to include neurogenesis and neuronal migration during prenatal development of neural systems. In 1992 she became a faculty member of NINDS and in 1999 became Chief of the newly created Cellular and Developmental Neurobiology Section. Susan has trained over 100 students including 12 M.S./Ph.D. students and 33 postdoctoral fellows. Susan’s core research is focused on characterizing the development and regulation of the GnRH neuroendocrine system, and how genetic and/or environmental changes alter the molecular and cellular properties of GnRH neurons at different developmental, metabolic and/or reproductive stages.