Official Story
Eric Klann received his B.S. in Chemistry from Gannon University in 1984 and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine in 1989. He did postdoctoral training at Baylor College of Medicine with David Sweatt before taking his first faculty position in the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh in 1994. In 2001, he moved to the Department of Molecular Physiology at Baylor College of Medicine where remained until 2006 before joining the Center for Neural Science (CNS) at New York University (NYU), where is now Professor and Director. His research is focused on the molecular mechanisms of translational control and their role in activity-dependent changes in synaptic function and behavior, including cognition. He also studies how dysregulated translational control contributes to altered synaptic function and aberrant behaviors in developmental brain disorders and neurodegenerative disease. He has published over 160 original research articles, reviews, commentaries, and book chapters. He served as a Reviewing Editor for the Journal of Neuroscience, currenlty serves as a Section Editor for Brain Research, and is on the editoral boards of several other journals. He is a former member and chair of the Neural Oxidative Metabolism and Death and Molecular and Cellular Substrates of Complex Disorders Study Sections of the National Institutes of Health. He serves on the Scientific Advisory Boards for the Pitt Hopkins Syndrome Foundation and the Foundation for Angelman Syndrome Therapeutics, where he is also the Chair. He also has served on the Fragile X Outcomes Measures and TSC Neurocognitive Working Groups for the National Institutes of Health. He has served as the Treasurer and the President of the Molecular and Cellular Cognition Society. He is the recipient of a NARSAD Distinguished Investigator Award and the Jacob Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award from the National Instittutes of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Unofficial Story
Eric grew up in a steel town in Western Pennsylvania just north of Pittsburgh, where he spent most of his time trying to stay out of trouble by studying and playing sports, primarily basketball. Despite being ranked 5th in a class of 867 at his high school, he decided to go to Gannon University to play Division II basketball and major in chemistry with the idea of eventually becoming an M.D. However, afternoon biology and chemistry labs conflicted with basketball practice, so he stopped playing at the collegiate level after his freshman year to concentrate on his grades in order to get into medical school. After working for two summers during college at the hospital across the street from his home, Eric realized that he didn't really like sick people, so he reasoned that it probably was unwise to become an M.D. He didn't really like chemistry either, so not knowing what to do, he decided to get a Ph.D. in biochemistry in any graduate program that would take him. Eric spent the next five years at the then Medical College of Virginia in Richmond working on his Ph.D with Keith Shelton studying nuclear proteins and molecular signaling. He was an average graduate student who spent 4 to 5 days a week playing basketball in 3 different leagues. Things turned around for him scientifically after Keith told him that he really needed to be as competitive in the lab as he was on the basketball court. Eric took this advice to heart and began working harder in the lab. He also met his future wife Amy, who was working as a summer student in a microbiology lab down the hall from his lab, which provided additional motivation for him to focus and finish his Ph.D. as quickly as possible. Eric became interested in neuroscience because one of the proteins he worked on was enriched in the brain, so he decided to do his postdoctoral work on molecular signaling involved in synaptic plasticity and memory. At a meeting in Chicago he met David Sweatt, who was finishing his postdoc with Eric Kandel and was going to start his own group at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Eric jumped at the opportunity to work with David, thinking he would be working on the regulation of protein synthesis in long-term sensitization in Aplysia. However, David decided to begin working in the mammalian hippocampus studying kinases in long-term potentiation. This was a bit problematic for Eric since David had little or no experience recording from rat hippocampal slices. Fortunately, Dan Johnston's lab was close by and he kindly allowed his graduate students and postdocs to teach Eric how to make slices and do recordings. During this time Amy got her Ph.D. in microbiology at Baylor. Eric's postdoctoral fellowship was productive and he was able to obtain a faculty position in 1994 at the University of Pittsburgh, where Amy also began her postdoctoral fellowship. Being back in Western Pennsylvania, they were close to most of Eric's family and many of his friends... perhaps too many. Despite being able to go to many Pittsburgh Steeler, Penguin, and Pirate games in those years, in 2001 Eric and Amy decided to move back to Houston where he was finally able to begin working on translational control in the nervous system, only 12 years behind schedule. He also began working on mouse models of developmental brain disorders and neurodegenerative disease. During this time Amy began law school, eventually becoming a patent attorney. In 2005, she moved to New York City to begin practicing law, which meant that Eric needed to find another job. Fortunately, CNS was looking for a molecular neuroscientist studying synaptic plasticity and memory, and Eric joined the faculty of NYU in 2006, where he has been ever since.