معرفی
Phyllis Robinson is a Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), where she has been a faculty member since 1992. She is renowned for her research on signal transduction in photoreceptors, particularly focusing on melanopsin and its role in non-image-forming vision. Her work bridges biochemistry, molecular biology, and physiology to understand visual pigment adaptations. At UMBC, she co-founded the Women in Science and Engineering group, served as Co-PI on the NSF ADVANCE grant, and currently co-chairs the University executive committee on Gender and Diversity in STEM. She also directs the NIH-funded U-RISE training program.
Her research has resulted in over 50 peer-reviewed publications and mentorship of 10 PhD students and more than 50 undergraduates. She has contributed extensively to understanding phototransduction mechanisms, retinal pigments, and their evolutionary adaptations in marine mammals and other species.
Her recent publications highlight studies on melanopsin's two-photon activation, phosphorylation plasticity, clathrin-mediated endocytosis, and spectral tuning in marine species. These works span disciplines including neuroscience, molecular biology, and visual ecology, with subfields like photoreceptor regulation, GPCR dynamics, and environmental adaptation.
Scientific grants include multiple NIH-sponsored projects on vision biology and a grant from the Hrabowski Innovation Fund for interdisciplinary research in mathematics and medicine. She has taught courses in neurobiology, vision science, and signal transduction, and her lab (Robinson Lab) investigates structural and molecular aspects of melanopsin phototransduction.
