Alan L. Goldin, the director of the program, completed his M.D. and Ph.D. training in Human Genetics in the Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of Michigan Medical School. He then pursued postdoctoral training in molecular neurobiology for 5 years with Drs. Norman Davidson and Henry Lester at Caltech, during which time he was a Lucille P. Markey Scholar. Dr. Goldin is a faculty member in the Departments of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics, Anatomy & Neurobiology, and Physiology & Biophysics. His lab investigates the role of voltage-gated sodium channels in normal and abnormal physiology of the central nervous system, with two main goals. The first aim is to determine the effects of abnormal sodium channel function on the animal, which is being accomplished by constructing and analyzing transgenic mice that express sodium channel mutations that cause epilepsy in humans. The second goal is to determine the mechanisms by which different sodium channels traffic to different regions of the neuron, which is being pursued by expressing differentially tagged wild-type and mutant sodium channels in primary neuronal cells, followed by microscopic analysis of localization over time. His research has been funded by NIH, NSF, the American Heart Association, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and the McKnight Foundation. Dr. Goldin has been director of the UCI MSTP since 1993. and his goal for the program is to have students with diverse backgrounds and research interests help each other to learn to apply rigorous scientific approaches from many fields to research and clinical practice.