Shelley Halpain

Shelley Halpain is a Professor in the Division of Biological Sciences, Section of Neurobiology, at the University of California San Diego. She received her undergraduate degree with honors from the University of California Irvine, where she first developed her career-long interest in the development and plasticity of neural circuits. She received her Ph.D. from The Rockefeller University, in the laboratory of Bruce McEwen, and did postdoctoral training with Paul Greengard, a 2000 Nobel Laureate. These studies cemented her interest in cellular and molecular neuroscience, and paved the way for her two decades of work on the neuronal cytoskeleton.

Dr. Halpain became an Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia Health Sciences Center, then was later recruited to The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. In 2007 she joined the faculty at UC San Diego, where her laboratory currently uses both rodent and human neurons to investigate cellular mechanisms in stroke, synaptic plasticity, and autism.