Miller Named Richards Professor of Pharmacology

Richard Miller, professor of molecular pharmacology and biological chemistry, has been named Alfred Newton Richards Professor of Pharmacology at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Miller is a leader in the field of pharmacology of receptors, signal transduction and synaptic transmission.

His research focuses on the molecular aspects of nerve cell communications, with emphasis on the voltage-sensitive calcium channels that are responsible for the influx of calcium into neurons and the release of transmitter.

Miller has demonstrated that calcium channels consist of a family of related molecules that form multi-subunit channels. Using molecular biological, electrophysiological and imaging techniques, Miller has identified the channels’ different biophysical and pharmacological properties and various neuronal functions.

Miller also studies the molecular basis of neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, Lou Gehrig’s disease, HIV-1 related dementia and other neuropathological conditions.

He is the recipient of several fellowships and lectureships, including a Guggenheim Award and a John Jacob Abel Award. He has served on a number of editorial advisory boards at leading scientific journals, including Trends in Neuroscience, Molecular Pharmacology, Neuropharmacology and the British Journal of Pharmacology, as well as on three National Institutes of Health study sections.

Before joining Northwestern in 2001, Miller served on the faculty at the University of Chicago from 1977 to 2001.

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