Researcher profiles

    Over the years, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health researchers have been pioneers in forging new territory through stem cell research, organ transplantation, gene therapy, computerized X-ray images of blood vessels, brain plasticity research, head injury treatment and asthma research.

    Our faculty includes National Medal of Science recipients, National Academy of Sciences honorees, internationally recognized researchers and physician/scientists, and clinicians dedicated to improving the delivery of primary care medicine.

    Meet some of the researchers who are shaping the future of health care.

    Caroline Alexander, PhD

    Alexander, an investigator at the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, seeks to identify the specific growth-signaling pathways of a tumor at the cellular level.

    Mark Burkard, MD, PhD

    Burkard's laboratory seeks to link therapies with their targets within cancer cells using genetic tools, and to identify patients whose cancers are most likely to benefit from particular drugs.

    Elizabeth Burnside, MD, MPH

    Burnside uses computer technology and a growing collection of clinical data to develop computer-based decision making tools for breast imaging to enhance breast cancer screening and diagnosis.

    Sean Fain, PhD

    Fain, a medical physicist, is exploring four- and five-dimensional imaging to enhance and create new technologies to improve patient care.

    David Gamm, MD, PhD

    Gamm, associate professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences and director of the McPherson Eye Research Institute, treats pediatric and adult patients with eye diseases.

    Rob Kalejta, PhD

    Kalejta is seeking ways to outsmart the human cytomegalovirus, which is no small feat; after all, viruses have millions of years of evolution on their side.

    Ned Kalin, MD

    Kalin's lab is working toward discoveries that can form the basis of early interventions to treat children who are at risk of developing long-term anxiety and related psychiatric disorders.

    Timothy Kamp, MD, PhD

    Through years of stem cell research, Kamp’s lab is exploring how that scar could be replaced with other cells, even cells from the patient’s body. Through a new process of creating stem cells, now all it takes is a simple biopsy of skin.

    Richard Moss, PhD

    Moss has an active research program focused on contractile processes in heart and skeletal muscles and alterations in contraction in diseases such as heart failure.

    Alan Rapraeger, PhD

    Rapraeger’s team of scientists at the UW Carbone Cancer Center works on a family of receptors called syndecans, which help the cell organize other receptors on the cell’s surface.

    Avtar Roopra, PhD

    Roopra's lab studies epilepsy and breast cancer - two seemingly disparate areas of scientific inquiry that have yielded surprising connections.

    Gail Robertson, PhD

    Robertson studies defects in ion channels, with the hope of better understanding the vulnerabilities and the triggers that lead to cardiac arrhythmias.

    David Wassarman, PhD

    At first glance, one might think the brains of humans and fruit flies have little in common, but Wassarman's research is showing that we can learn a lot about traumatic brain injury in humans by studying the tiny flies.