Matthew Neil Rasband Ph.D

Dr. Rasband was nominated by Dr. Dora Angelaki, chair of the BCM department of neuroscience, and Dr. Huda Zoghbi, director of the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children’s Hospital and professor of molecular and human genetics at BCM, for his “groundbreaking work on characterizing the molecular architecture of the axon initial segment and nodes of Ranvier… Nodes are essential for conduction of nerve impulses throughout the nervous system, and their disruption contributes to the pathophysiology of many disorders including multiple sclerosis, peripheral neuropathies, and other white matter diseases,” the nominators wrote. They cited three papers by Rasband as demonstration of his work. One, in PNAS, provides first evidence of a link between neuron-glia signaling and the cytoskeletal rearrangements that take place during myelination (the accumulation of a fatty layer called myelin around nerve fibers).

In a publication in the journal Cell, Dr. Rasband showed how the cytoskeletal and scaffolding protein ankyrinG is recruited to and forms the axon initial segment, the “gatekeeper” of all neuronal output. And in a recent publication in the journal Neuron, Dr. Rasband and his colleagues described the components needed to make and assemble the nodes of Ranvier, the booster stations that enable electrical signals to travel from neuron to neuron.

“To say that Dr. Rasband is actively involved in graduate training is an understatement,” write Drs. Angelaki and Zoghbi. “He is consistently one of the top-rated teachers in our Neuroscience program and was the inaugural recipient of the ‘Outstanding Educator’ award in 2011 at the Rush Record Neuroscience Retreat.”

For his work, Dr. Rasband also recently received a Jacob Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award by the National Institutes of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, which comes with seven years of funding for his research program.