April 16, 2001
Albert Berger Named Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Education
Dr. Albert J. Berger, professor of physiology and biophysics, has been named associate dean of research and graduate education at the University of Washington (UW) School of Medicine. He will oversee the school’s biomedical research activities as well as its graduate and postdoctoral training programs in the basic sciences. The appointment is effective July 1.
Berger will succeed Dr. Daniel Dorsa, a noted neuroscientist who is returning to research and teaching in the UW Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.
Berger was acting chair of his department in 2000, and has been a UW professor since 1985.
He has held numerous national scientific leadership positions, including serving as a member of the Respiratory and Applied Physiology Study Section of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and serving as a reviewer for many national federal programs and private foundations in the areas of research, graduate training and career development.
Berger’s own field of research is respiratory neurobiology. His laboratory studies how hypoglossal motoneurons cause the tongue muscle to contract and the role of this activity in speaking, chewing and swallowing. These cells also appear to have a role in normal and abnormal respiratory-related behaviors, such as obstructive sleep apnea. This work is supported by two major NIH grants.
Berger has twice received Javits Neuroscience Investigator Awards. He has also received an NIH Research Career Development Award, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and a Senior International Fellowship from the Forgarty International Center.
He is the author or co-author of 110 publications, including a textbook, Physiology of Respiration, now in its second edition, which he wrote with Dr. Michael Hlastala, UW professor of physiology and biophysics and of medicine.
Berger was the associate editor of the American Journal of Physiology: Lung, Cellular and Molecular Physiology and recently served a three-year term on the editorial board of the Journal of Neurophysiology.
Berger graduated from Cornell University. He earned a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in physiology from the University of California-San Francisco.
