Denise J. Montell BA, PhD

Dr. Denise Montell earned her B.S. degree in biochemistry and cell biology at the University of California, San Diego and her Ph.D. in Neuroscience at Stanford University. As an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow at the Carnegie Institution she developed a new model for studying cell motility in vivo using a powerful combination of cell biology and molecular genetic approaches.

After only two years she attained an independent junior faculty position at the Carnegie and two years later became an Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, rising to the rank of Full Professor in 2002. At the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine she served as Director of the Graduate Program in Biological Chemistry for 10 years and was the founding director of the Center for Cell Dynamics, an interdisciplinary group of investigators from eight different departments who shared a common interest in observing and manipulating biochemical events and cellular behaviors in real time, in living cells, tissues and organisms. She currently serves on the Advisory Councils of both the American Cancer Society and the National Institutes of General Medical Sciences. She has recently joined the faculty of MCDB at UCSB to pursue her interests in research, teaching and program building.