Roles
Professor Physiology and Biophysics
Graduate program Director Cellular Physiology and Molecular Biophysics Graduate Program
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Education & Training
Education
Training
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Honors & Awards
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Teaching Interests
At the University of Miami, I have lectured in Cell Physiology, Neurophysiology, and Cardiovascular Physiology to medical students and led small group sessions in these courses. I have consistently received high scores on teaching evaluations of these courses. In addition, I have given several lectures and led small group sessions in the introductory graduate courses PIBS 701 and 702. I am co-coordinator for the upper-level graduate courses Principles of Membrane Physiology and Biophysics (PHS 741 & 742). I am also the Graduate Program Director for the Cellular Physiology and Molecular Biophysics Graduate Program. I have taught at national and international graduate/post graduate courses at Cold Spring Harbor and in Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay. I have given the key-note lecture at the Ion Channels and Synaptic Transmission course at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory for several years. I find teaching to be very rewarding and to further stimulate my interest in understanding human physiology at the molecular, cellular, organ, and whole body level.<br> As a mentor, I am committed to having my students complete their program and in the future success of my students and postdocs. My teaching and mentoring style reflects this commitment. -
Research Interests
I am interested in understanding how mutations in voltage-gated ion channels cause cardiac arrhythmia. I am also interested in developing treatments for cardiac arrhythmias caused by mutations in voltage-gated ion channels. The goal of my research is to develop small-molecule approaches for treatments of cardiac arrhythmias.<br> In our studies, we combine structural information with functional studies to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of ion channels and to elucidate how mutations in these channels cause diseases. My research, supported by grants from the NIH (currently 3 R01 grants), is focused on three major questions: 1) What is the mechanism of voltage activation in cardiac ion channels, 2) What are the functional defects caused by mutations in cardiac ion channels, and 3) how can we restore the function of these arrhythmia-causing mutant channels by small-molecule modulators?<br> We use techniques from the molecule to whole organisms to understand how voltage-gated ion channels function on the molecular level and the role these channels play in whole organisms. We are currently focusing on understanding the voltage activation mechanism in pacemaker channels in the heart using fluorescence, electrophysiology, and molecular biology techniques. We are also studying mutations in a potassium channel that cause cardiac arrhythmia and try to develop novel treatment for cardiac arrhythmia that target these ion channels. We use optical techniques to measure the electrical activity in cardiac cells and measure the effects of novel drug compounds on this activity. We develop cardiac cells from human stem cells with mutations in cardiac ion channels that cause arrhythmia and sudden cardiac death. Our goal is to develop novel treatments for cardiac arrhythmia to prevent sudden cardiac deaths.<br> With these novel tools, applied from the molecular level to the whole animal, we will be able to answer these questions: what are the molecular mechanisms underlying defects in ion channels causing different types of cardiac arrhythmias? What small-molecule modulators would be best to treat different patients with different ion channel mutations that cause cardiac arrhythmia? This “personalized-medicine” approach to treating cardiac arrhythmia is expected to drastically improve the clinical outcome for patients with cardiac arrhythmia. -
Publications
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Grants & Sponsored Research
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