Title: Associate professor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Education: Ph.D., biochemistry, cellular and molecular biology, Johns Hopkins University; B.S., physics, University of California at Santa Barbara
Age: 38
Career mentors: Susan Forsburg, University of Southern California; Thomas Pollard, Yale University; and Ralph Quatrano, Washington University-St. Louis
Words of wisdom/advice for new faculty members: “You will be successful if you follow your passion, and you will know you have chosen the right path if you look forward to going to work every day.”
Dr. Magdalena Bezanilla’s passion for science was cultivated in her father’s laboratory. Watching biophysicist Dr. Francisco Bezanilla study the squid’s giant axon, the largest known nerve cell in the animal kingdom, had a profound impact on Bezanilla’s professional future. To conduct his research, Bezanilla’s father moved the family from Los Angeles to a marine biological laboratory in Cape Cod, Mass., every summer.
“That’s where I got to see what was going on in my dad’s lab,” says Bezanilla, associate professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “My dad tried to keep me out of the lab as much as possible because I was a bit of a distraction to everybody.”
