Ellen A. Lumpkin, PhD

Administrative Accomplishments

Dr. Lumpkin pursues two passions through leadership.  First, she has led six programs that promote excellence in mentorship and training across career stages because she cares deeply about making research careers accessible to all aspiring scientists.  She has directed training programs for promising undergraduates bound for graduate school, for early-stage researchers aspiring to become neuroscience leaders, and a mentorship program for junior faculty. As SfN Program Committee Chair, she conceived the SfNova Lectures, which spotlight rising stars at the Annual Meeting.  Such programs that promote thriving of early-stage neuroscientists are essential in this challenging climate.  

Dr. Lumpkin also co-founded two cross-disciplinary research initiatives to address unmet clinical needs through bold new research directions. These networks forged international collaborations between neuroscientists, engineers, and clinicians to identify mechanisms of nerve-injury pain, and the neuroscience of body-brain signaling.  Through these experiences, Dr. Lumpkin has honed skills in creative problem solving, collaboration and communicating effectively both with the public and across disciplines.

Degree, Institute, Year Earned

Research Areas

Mechanosensory signaling; somatosensation; ion channels, synapses and neuronal excitability in health and disease; epithelial-neuronal signaling; development & plasticity of peripheral innervation

Current Position(s) at Your Current Institution

University of California, Berkeley

• Professor of Cell Biology, Development & Physiology, Department of Molecular & Cell Biology
• Member, Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute 
• Head Graduate Advisor, PhD Program in Molecular & Cell Biology
• Founder and Co-director, Life Sciences Faculty Mentorship Program
• Director, Maximizing Access to Research Careers (MARC) Program for Undergraduate Students

Memberships

Service Positions

Editorial Boards:

Other Service Positions:

Science Biography

Ellen A. Lumpkin is a Professor of Cell Biology, Development and Physiology, and Member of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. A first-generation college student from rural Texas, Dr. Lumpkin completed her B.S. in animal science at Texas Tech University. She performed her PhD training in neuroscience with Dr. A. James Hudspeth at UT Southwestern Medical Center and The Rockefeller University, where she studied mechanosensory transduction in vestibular hair cells. As a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington, she entered the field of somatosensation, focusing on epithelial-neural signaling in touch sensation. In 2001, she started her lab as an early independence Sandler Fellow at University of California, San Francisco. She then joined the faculty of Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, Texas) as an Assistant Professor of Neuroscience, of Molecular Physiology & Biophysics, and of Molecular & Human Genetics. In 2010, Dr. Lumpkin moved to Columbia University in the City of New York as an Associate Professor of Somatosensory Biology in the Departments of Physiology & Cellular Biophysics and of Dermatology. In 2019, Dr. Lumpkin was appointed as Professor at UC Berkeley, where she teaches undergraduate students, trains graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, and pursues curiosity-driven research. Her laboratory focuses on mechanisms that encode environmental stimuli into neural signals that underlie the senses of touch, itch and pain. By comparing mechanosensory mechanisms across cell types and species, Dr. Lumpkin’s research aims to elucidate both common motifs and unique specializations through which biological systems monitor myriad forces to guide adaptive behaviors.  

The full CV for this candidate can be found within the ballot.