Richard Smeyne

Rich is Professor and Chair of the Department of Neuroscience at Thomas Jefferson University and director of the Jefferson Comprehensive Parkinson’s Disease Center. He received his Ph.D. in Neuroanatomy in 1989 followed with postdoctoral training at the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology where he pioneered early studies of transgenesis; generating the first inducible transgenic mouse (c-fos-lacZ) that expressed a cellular marker based on the cognate expression of its promoter. The first 10 years of his career were spent in Pharma (BMS and Hoffman-LaRoche) followed by 30 years in Academia. He was the first awardee of the Parkinson Foundation’s Impact Award and has also received the Healthcare Impact award from the city of Philadelphia.