Biophysical Society Bulletin | February 2024

Biophysicist in Profile

Gabriela K. Popescu Area of Research Mechanisms of activation and modulation of neurotransmitter-gated ion channels

Institution University at Buffalo

At-a-Glance

Gabriela K. Popsecu is a Romanian-born American biophysicist with expertise in the molecular phys iology of glutamate-gated channels. She is professor of biochemistry and clinical professor of an esthesiology in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo. She is best known for her quantitative work on the biophysical properties of NMDA receptors. She begins her term as Biophysical Society President in February 2024.

Gabriela K. Popescu

The oldest of three children with two economics professors for parents, Gabriela K. Popescu took for granted that she too would become an academic and teach Marxian economics to generations of Romanian undergraduate students. Her parents encouraged their children to pursue diverse interests, however. As a child, she loved literature and was an avid read er; enjoyed languages, especially English and Russian; and excelled in math. She shares, “Physics, chemistry, and biology were not in my field of view, not part of my envisioned future." That changed in her senior year of high school when a lecture in genetic engineering inspired her to consider a profession for herself that felt more meaningful. She envisioned how genetically modified crops could feed the entire world to end hunger on the planet and wanted to be part of that transfor mation. “I absolutely loved the challenge. One may say I found my calling," she recalls. "I bought every textbook and problem set I could find and spent many late nights answering my own questions. I still love to do that, although now I have the internet and PubMed at my fingertips.” She attended the University of Bucharest, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 1984, and earning a mas ter’s degree in biochemistry the following year. She then was recruited to do biomedical research at the Oncologic Institute of Bucharest, where she worked testing anticancer drugs with enzymatic assays, while at the same time she started a family. In 1989, she joined the faculty of the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Bucharest as a lecturer. Two years later, Popescu enrolled in the Biochemistry Graduate Program at the University at Buffalo. "Flying from Bucharest to Buffalo in 1991, I had a return ticket just in case," she re veals. "My children, who were four and six at the time, joined me the following year, and the rest—as they say—is histo ry.” She still thinks that graduate school in a foreign country, with two elementary-school-aged children, was the hardest thing she has ever done. Years later, she uses that experience to guide, coach, and mentor students, postdocs, and junior faculty, with the knowledge that encouragement and sup port from a more experienced scientist can often make a real

difference in a person’s life and can go a long way to attract and retain passionate and talented individuals in scientific research. During this challenging time, the Counseling Center at the University at Buffalo, which offered free counseling sessions, was an unanticipated lifeline for her. Aside from invaluable psychological growth, the experience connected her with peers within the university, and stimulated her to begin con sidering the human mind from a scientific perspective. Rather than feeding the planet with genetically modified crops, she shifted her professional efforts toward understanding how the brain works. “I developed a passion for understanding how our brains serve and fail us, more specifically for understanding the molecular basis of neuropsychiatric phenomena,” Popescu ex plains. Her first postdoctoral position was in the lab of Michael Stachowiak , studying cellular neurobiology; she investigated signaling through Fibroblast Growth Factor Receptors. Her second postdoc was in ion channel biophysics with Tony Auer bach , investigating signaling through neurotransmitter-gated channels. “I will be forever grateful to Tony Auerbach, who en trusted me, a biochemist, with solving the kinetic mechanism of NMDA receptors, the principal calcium-passing synaptic receptors in brain and spinal cord. Gratitude also goes to a NIDA-supported F32 fellowship that supported my research, and an AHA Scientist Development Grant, which represented the ‘foot-in-the-door’ for a tenure-track academic position,” she remembers. “My postdoctoral work represented a solid springboard to asking both fundamental and translational questions about synaptic transmission and brain plasticity.” Following her postdoctoral training, she accepted a ten ure-track assistant professor position in the Department of Biochemistry at the University at Buffalo. Popescu had chosen to stay in Buffalo to avoid uprooting her children, both of whom were in middle school during the time she was completing postdoctoral training and embarking on her career

February 2024

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