Graduate students in the pharmacology graduate program are trained rigorously in cellular, molecular, and integrative pharmacology to provide a foundation for their dissertation research. During their first year they work in the laboratories of at least three faculty and choose a graduate faculty mentor to train with and complete their research / dissertation.

Students are given an unusually wide range of opportunities for research, including cardiovascular pharmacology; cellular communication and signal transduction; studies in regulation of gene expression; membrane biophysics; muscle excitability and contractility; synapse formation; and neuronal growth and repair.

We have a well-funded faculty with diverse research interests including:

• Regulation of cardiac growth, differentiation and apoptosis; cellular and genetic mechanisms of heart failure and cardiomyopathies

• Regulation of cardiac and skeletal muscle contraction

• Cancer and cell growth control; morphogenesis and cytoskeletal dynamics

• Mechanisms of steroid receptor and G protein-mediated signal transduction; structure/function analysis of membrane receptors

• Molecular biology of neuronal differentiation, axon growth and synapse formation

• Genomics, bioinformatics and genetic models of signal transduction

• Discovery and target identification of natural therapeutics; stem cell therapy for cardiac disease