Marla Feller

Marla Beth Feller is the Paul Licht Distinguished Professor in Biological Sciences and Member of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. She studies the mechanisms that underpin the assembly of neural circuits during development. Feller is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Marla Feller
Born
Marla Beth Feller
Alma materUniversity of California, Berkeley (AB, PhD)
AwardsFellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2017)
Scientific career
InstitutionsUniversity of California, Berkeley
Bell Labs
University of California, San Diego
National Institutes of Health
ThesisThe application of the symmetry properties of optical second harmonic generation of studies of interfaces and gases (1991)
Doctoral advisorYuen-Ron Shen
Websitefellerlab.squarespace.com/people

Early life and education

Feller was inspired to work in physics at high school, where she was taught by a graduate student.[1] She studied physics at the University of California, Berkeley and graduated in 1985.[2] She remained there for her graduate studies, working under the supervision of Yuen-Ron Shen on liquid crystals.[3] During her doctorate she played Ultimate Frisbee, and may have been one of the founders of the University of California, Berkeley women's Ultimate team.[4] She completed her doctoral research in 1991,[5] and embarked on a course in neural systems and behaviour at the Woods Hole Research Center.

Research and career

After her PhD, Feller was a postdoctoral researcher at Bell Labs from 1992 to 1994, where she worked in the biological computation department with David W. Tank.[2][6] She returned to the University of California, Berkeley, where she worked alongside Carla J. Shatz as a Miller postdoctoral fellow.[6] Here she started to apply novel imaging approaches to neuroscience.[7] Feller was appointed as a tenure-track investigator at the National Institutes of Health in 1998. She joined the University of California, San Diego in 2000, first as the Silvo Varon Assistant Professor of Neuroregeneration and eventually as an Associate Professor. Feller was recruited to the University of California, Berkeley in 2007 and made Head of the Division of Neurobiology in 2013.

Her research evaluates the mechanisms that underpin the developmental assembly of neural circuits. She primarily investigates the retina, combining two-photon excitation microscopy and electrophysiology to establish how young retinas generate retinal waves, and the role that these waves play in retinal development.[7][8] She has monitored the intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cell (ipRGC) in newborn mice, identifying that they communicate with one another as part of a network that serves to boost retinal eye sensitivity.[9][10] She has studied the ipRGC in mice, showing that even before the retina is fully developed a mouse can detect light.[11] Her research also considers the organisation of neural circuitry that dictates directional sensitivity in the retina.[8][12]

Awards and honours

Her awards and honours include:

Selected publications

Her publications include:

  • Feller, Marla Beth (May 24, 1996). "Requirement for Cholinergic Synaptic Transmission in the Propagation of Spontaneous Retinal Waves". Science. 272 (5265): 1182–1187. Bibcode:1996Sci...272.1182F. doi:10.1126/science.272.5265.1182. PMID 8638165. S2CID 11295283.
  • Feller, Marla Beth (2010). "Mechanisms underlying spontaneous patterned activity in developing neural circuits". Nature Reviews Neuroscience. 11 (1): 18–29. doi:10.1038/nrn2759. PMC 2902252. PMID 19953103.
  • Feller, Marla Beth (1999). "Spontaneous Correlated Activity in Developing Neural Circuits". Neuron. 22 (4): 653–656. doi:10.1016/s0896-6273(00)80724-2. PMID 10230785. S2CID 18638084.

References
  1. Balusu, Chinmayi (December 21, 2019). "Dr. Marla Feller". Medium. Retrieved January 28, 2020.
  2. "Marla Feller". Neurizons 2020. Retrieved January 28, 2020.
  3. "Shen Group – People". research.physics.berkeley.edu. Retrieved January 28, 2020.
  4. Staff, Olivia Jerram | Senior (June 6, 2019). "UC Berkeley professors share their favorite summer memories". dailycal.org. The Daily Californian. Retrieved January 28, 2020.
  5. Feller, Marla Beth (1991). The application of the symmetry properties of optical second harmonic generation of studies of interfaces and gases. berkeley.edu (PhD thesis). University of California, Berkeley. OCLC 79768062.
  6. "Speakers and Panelists – 2019 APS CUWiP at UC Davis". cuwip.physics.ucdavis.edu. Retrieved January 28, 2020.
  7. "How does the developing brain learn to perceive the world before it can see it?". Salon. October 8, 2017. Retrieved January 28, 2020.
  8. "Faculty Research Page". Department of Molecular & Cell Biology. Retrieved January 28, 2020.
  9. S, Robert; ers; November 25, Media relations|; 2019November 25; 2019 (November 25, 2019). "Babies in the womb may see more than we thought". news.berkeley.edu. Berkeley News. Retrieved January 28, 2020.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  10. "Fetuses see more than previously believed". News-Medical.net. November 26, 2019. Retrieved January 28, 2020.
  11. Staff, Aditya Katewa | (December 2, 2019). "Researchers shed new light on photoreceptors in mice". dailycal.org. The Daily Californian. Retrieved January 28, 2020.
  12. Feller, Marla. "Development of direction selectivity in retina". Grantome.
  13. "Marla Feller". nasonline.org. Retrieved January 28, 2020.
  14. "Awardees". mcknight.org. McKnight Foundation. Retrieved January 28, 2020.
  15. "Past Seminars". medicine.buffalo.edu. Retrieved January 28, 2020.
  16. "Feller Elected as AAAS Fellow". Department of Molecular & Cell Biology. November 21, 2017. Retrieved January 28, 2020.
  17. "Marla Feller receives Distinguished Faculty Mentor Award". Berkeley Neuroscience. March 16, 2018. Retrieved January 28, 2020.
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