2016 Frederick W.L. Kerr Basic Science Research Award

Michael Gold, PhD

Dr. Gold is presently a Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Pittsburgh. He earned his PhD in Neuroscience from the University of California Los Angeles in 1994 and received post-doctoral training in neuropharmacology and biophysics at the Universities of California San Francisco and Los Angeles. Dr. Gold began his academic career at the University of Maryland, Baltimore in 1998 where he stayed until leaving for Pittsburgh in 2006 where he runs a lab focused on peripheral mechanisms of pain. His research in this field has focused on identification of factors, most commonly voltage-, Ca2+-, and ligand-gated ion channels that enable sensory neurons to contribute to persistent pain, such as that associated with chronic inflammation or nerve injury. He serves on the editorial board for the Journal Pain, the Journal of Pain Research. Dr. Gold served on the scientific program committee for the Society for Neuroscience, has served on the scientific program committee of the American Pain Society for 6 of the last 13 annual meetings, was the co-chair of the present meeting and the incoming chair of the scientific program committee for the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP). Dr. Gold was elected to the Council of the IASP in 2012 and serves as the IASP liaison to the American Pain Society Board. Dr. Gold provides ongoing service on scientific advisory panels for the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense and foreign funding agencies such as the Welcome Trust.