University of Virginia Health System

Jeffrey R. Holt, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Department of Neuroscience &
Department of Otolaryngology

Education

B.S.     Wofford College, 1986
Ph.D. University of Rochester, 1995
Post-doc. Harvard Medical School, 1995-1999

I got my doctorate from the Department of Physiology at the University of Rochester in 1995.  For my thesis work I studied inward rectifier potassium currents in saccular hair cells in Ruth Anne Eatock's lab.  I went on to a post-doctoral position with David Corey in the Neurobiology Department at Harvard Medical School.  While there I characterized transduction and adaptation in utricle hair cells; developed an adenoviral vector system to transfect cultured hair cells, and along with collaborators identified Myosin Ic as a component of the hair cell adaptation motor.  I moved to the University of Virginia in October, 2001 to set up my own lab.  As an Associate Professor in the Neuroscience Department at UVa, I am involved with graduate student and medical student teaching; I am a member of the Neuroscience Graduate Program and am principal investigator (PI) for our lab.  As PI I write grants and manuscripts for publication, and supervise and mentor lab members and make time to work on my own research project.  I am currently working on two projects:  1) I am investigating the function of potassium channels in hair cells using adenoviral vectors to deliver wild-type and mutant channel genes and 2) I am interested in identifying the genes and proteins that are required for hair cell mechanotransduction.