Michael Friedlander, Ph.D.
“This is one of the most incredible places in the world for cross-disciplinary research, where we're converging on answering some of the most critical health problems and challenges facing human kind today."
Advancing biomedical innovation at Virginia Tech
Michael Friedlander, the director of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, has helped steer more than $240 million in research growth while advancing translational science
Michael Friedlander is the vice president for health sciences and technology at Virginia Tech, the founding executive director of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute (FBRI) at VTC and the senior dean for research at the VTC School of Medicine. He is professor of biological sciences of the Virginia Tech College of Science, and of psychiatry and behavioral medicine of the VTC School of Medicine, and is an an affiliated faculty member of the Virginia Tech–Wake Forest University School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences. He has built the FBRI’s programs to over $240 million in extramural funding with more than 40 research teams and over 500 staff and students. Friedlander was among the first neuroscientists to directly label and identify individual physiologically characterized neurons in the living brain, to show the importance of the diffusible gaseous signal, nitric oxide, in modifying chemical signaling and visual processing in the brain, and to directly measure the communication between individual connected pairs of neurons in multiple regions of the brain including areas involved in learning and memory and visual processing (the hippocampus and the cerebral cortex). His lab’s most recent work characterized the role that timing of electrical signals in the brain can play in plasticity after brain injury and the richness of how calcium control synaptic communication in learning. His research findings have been published in leading scientific journals including Cell, JNeurosci-The Journal of Neuroscience, Nature, Neuron, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, and the Journal of Neurotrauma.
Friedlander previously served as the Evelyn McKnight professor of learning and memory at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and the Wilhelmina Robertson professor at Baylor College of Medicine. He was the founding chair of the Department of Neurobiology and director of the Civitan International Research Center on Intellectual Disabilities at UAB, and chair of the Department of Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine. Friedlander was the founding president of the Association of Medical School Neuroscience Department Chairs, chair of the Council of Academic Societies of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) representing over 90 professional medical and scientific societies, and was elected as an AAMC Distinguished Service Member. He served as chair of the National Association of Intellectual Disabilities Research Centers and as president of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, and is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Friedlander is an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow in Neuroscience, a National Institutes of Health Fogarty Center Senior International Research Fellow, a recipient of the American College of Physicians’ Menninger Award for Mental Health Research, the University of Illinois Distinguished Alumnus Award, and the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Society of Experimental Biology and Medicine. He has served as a visiting professor at the Australian National University’s John Curtin School of Medical Research, Oxford University, and the University of Paris. Friedlander completed a bachelor’s degree in biology at Florida State University, a Ph.D. in physiology and biophysics at the University of Illinois, and postdoctoral training at the University of Virginia. He and his wife, Sandra, have five daughters and nine grandchildren. Friedlander is originally from Miami, Florida.
- Executive Director, Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC
- Vice President for Health Sciences and Technology
- Senior Dean for Research, Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine
- Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, College of Science
- Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics, College of Engineering
- Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine, School of Medicine
Friedlander, M.J., C.-S. Lin and S.M. Sherman. Structure of physiologically identified X- and Y-cells in the cat's lateral geniculate nucleus. Science, 204:1114-1117, 1979.
Friedlander, M.J. The structure of physiologically classified neurons in the kitten dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus. Nature, 300:180-183, 1982.
Lal, R. and M.J. Friedlander. Gating of retinal transmission by afferent eye position and movement signals. Science, 243:93-96, 1989.
Sayer, R.J., M.J. Friedlander and S.J. Redman. Time course and amplitude of EPSPs evoked at synapses between pairs of CA3-CA1 neurons in hippocampal slice. J. Neurosci., 10:826-836, 1990.
Montague, P.R., C. Gancayco, M.J. Winn, R.B. Marchase and M.J. Friedlander. Role of NO production in NMDA receptor-mediated neurotransmitter release in cerebral cortex. Science, 263:973-977, 1994.
Dudek, S.M. and M.J. Friedlander. Developmental down-regulation of LTD in cortical layer IV and its independence of modulation by inhibition. Neuron, 16:1097-1106, 1996.
Kara, P. and M.J. Friedlander. Arginine analogues modify signal detection by neurons in the visual cortex, J Neurosci. 19:5528-5548, 1999.
Saez, I and Friedlander, MJ, Plasticity between neuronal pairs in layer 4 of visual cortex varies with synapse state J. Neurosci. 29: 15286-15298, 2009
Zhu PJ, Huang W, Kalikulov D, Yoo JW, Placzek AN, Stoica L, Zhou H, Bell JC, Friedlander MJ, Krnjević K, Noebels JL, Costa-Mattioli M. (2011). Suppression of PKR Promotes Network Excitability & Enhanced Cognition by Interferon-γ-Mediated Disinhibition. Cell, 147(6):1384-96.
- Wilhelmina Robertson Endowed Professor of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine
- Chair, Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine
- Director, Neuroscience Initiatives, Baylor College of Medicine
- University of Virginia: Postdoctoral fellowship
- University of Illinois: Ph.D.
- Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
- Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine Distinguished Scientist Award
- Elected Fellow of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine
- Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Board of Directors Distinguished Service Member
- First Annual Neuroscience Society Distinguished Scholar Award of the University of Alabama at Birmingham
- Wilhelmina Robertson Endowed Chair in Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, 2005-2010
- Evelyn F. McKnight Endowed Professor of Learning and Memory in Aging, University of Alabama at Birmingham
- University of Illinois Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology Distinguished Alumnus Award
- NIH Fogarty Center International Fellowship to the John Curtin School of Medical Research, Canberra, Australia
- Elected member of the Dana Foundation Brain Alliance
- WM Keck Foundation Award for Neurobiology Program Development
- American College of Physicians William C. Menninger Memorial Award for Distinguished Contributions to Mental Health Research
- Lucille P. Markey Foundation Center Award for Program Development In Neurobiology
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Neuroscience Fellowship
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