Molecular Microbiology & Immunology

Anita Zimmerman received a BS at the University of California, Berkeley, and a PhD in Physiology & Biophysics at the University of Miami Medical School, with advisors Dr. Birgit Rose and Dr. Karl Magleby. Her PhD thesis project was on the mechanism of cell-to-cell communication via gap junctions. Before arriving at Brown in 1987, she obtained postdoctoral training with Dr. Denis Baylor in Neurobiology at Stanford Medical School, where she began studying cyclic-nucleotide-gated ion channels and visual transduction in rods and cones. At Brown, she has continued to study ion channel biophysics, regulation and function in sensory transduction, using electrophysiology (e.g., "patch clamp") and molecular biology techniques. After decades of NIH-funded research, she now serves as a consultant and/or collaborator with other scientists.  She has a long history of serving as a member of NIH review panels and also has served on the editorial board of the premier ion channel journal, the Journal of General Physiology. Dr. Zimmerman teaches cellular neurophysiology and biophysics to medical students, as well as to graduate and undergraduate students, and has won awards for her teaching. She is Director of the Graduate Program in Molecular Pharmacology & Physiology and a former director of Brown's MD/PhD Program. She also is very devoted to increasing diversity and inclusion in science.