Paul Brehm is a researcher at the Vollum Institute at Oregon Health and Science University. He was formerly at Stony Brook University and played a key role in stimulating Martin Chalfie

Martin Chalfie

Martin Chalfie is an American scientist. He is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Biological Sciences at Columbia University, where he is also chair of the department of biological sciences. He shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Osamu Shimomura and Roger Y. Tsien "for the...

 to work on Green fluorescent protein

Green fluorescent protein

The green fluorescent protein is a protein composed of 238 amino acid residues that exhibits bright green fluorescence when exposed to blue light. Although many other marine organisms have similar green fluorescent proteins, GFP traditionally refers to the protein first isolated from the...

 for which Chalfie shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2008.

Biography

He graduated in zoology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison

University of Wisconsin–Madison

The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...

 and earned his Ph.D. UCLA focusing on marine biology

Marine biology

Marine biology is the scientific study of organisms in the ocean or other marine or brackish bodies of water. Given that in biology many phyla, families and genera have some species that live in the sea and others that live on land, marine biology classifies species based on the environment rather...

 and bioluminescence

Bioluminescence

Bioluminescence is the production and emission of light by a living organism. Its name is a hybrid word, originating from the Greek bios for "living" and the Latin lumen "light". Bioluminescence is a naturally occurring form of chemiluminescence where energy is released by a chemical reaction in...

 under James Morin. Postgraduate training with Roger Eckert at UCLA and Yoshi Kidokoro at the Salk Institute focused on calcium channels and synaptic transmission. The next 10 years were spent as an associate professor in physiology

Physiology

Physiology is the science of the function of living systems. This includes how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells, and bio-molecules carry out the chemical or physical functions that exist in a living system. The highest honor awarded in physiology is the Nobel Prize in Physiology or...

 at Tufts Medical School and summers at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole. In 1990 he moved to Stony Brook University where he served as professor of Neurobiology and Behavior before taking a position as Senior Scientist at the Vollum in 2007.