Dr. Rafuse appointed Head of Medical Neuroscience
Dr. Victor Rafuse has been appointed Head of the Department of Medical Neuroscience.
Dr. Rafuse, a professor in the Department of Medical Neuroscience and director of the Brain Repair Centre at Dalhousie, obtained his PhD in Pharmacology from the University of Alberta in 1993, followed by postdoctoral training at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Returning to Halifax in 2000, he joined the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, now the Department of Medical Neuroscience, as an assistant professor.
Dr. Rafuse’s research focuses on understanding neuromuscular plasticity after injury and neuromuscular development. In 2002, he began working with Drs. Rob Brownstone (Dalhousie) and Tom Jessell (Columbia) on embryonic stem (ES) cell derived motor neurons. Using this model, he studied the basic aspects of motor axon guidance during development and later diseases such as ALS. Recently, he started working with induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells to study ALS, and today his research uses human iPS cells in an in vivo model to study the disease. Dr. Rafuse also uses mouse ES cells to study motor neuron development, as well as for cell-replacement therapies designed to restore muscle function after injury or disease.
Dr. Rafuse has served on many departmental, faculty, and university committees since joining Dalhousie in 2000, and was member of a CIHR Neuroscience B Peer Review Committee, the Genes, Cells and Molecules Evaluation Group, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant Review Panel. He is co-founder of the Atlantic Mobility Action Project (AMAP) and sits on the steering committee for the Canadian Brain Research Strategy (CBRS), a national initiative to seek greater investment from the government in collaborative neuroscience research across Canada.
In announcing Dr. Rafuse’s appointment, I would like to acknowledge Dr. William Baldridge, who has dutifully held the headship position for the last 10 years. We are so grateful for his tremendous leadership in guiding the Department of Medical Neuroscience.