Disclaimer:  The following information is drawn from materials prepared by candidates for promotion to full professor.  It is intended to illustrate activities and materials that might support promotion.  In using these materials, please note the following:

               *The Provost (and, in some cases, the President) are the University officers authorized to approve promotions.  All levels of review below these officers are advisory.

               *Only Departments are empowered to propose promotions, and the Divisional Dean is charged with transmitting such proposals to the Provost or returning them to the Department.

*The judgment of the Department, Dean, and Provost will therefore be critical to assessing qualification for promotion.

               *Materials considered by the Department, Dean, and Provost will also (and always) include confidential evaluations obtained from outside the University.  Materials considered by the Provost will include the confidential evaluations of the Dean and Department, and those considered by the Dean will include the confidential evaluations of the Department.

               *Thus, the following materials are ONLY PART of a complete proposal for promotion, whereas promotion is based on the ENTIRE proposal.   Therefore, it should not be assumed that a record comparable to that below will necessarily result in promotion, or that a record not comparable to that below will fail to result in promotion.  The Departmental Chair is likely to be the best source of advice as to whether promotion is feasible and, when it is not, what additional activity may result in qualification for promotion.

               *This document has been prepared as a tool for use by associate professors in the Division of the Biological Sciences.  Other individuals who may find it informative are Department Chairmen, Section Heads, Committee Chairmen, senior faculty and potential recruits.  Its intent is to help guide individuals and their departments as they think about promotion to Professor.  This document is not intended to list the elements that every promotion proposal will be expected to address.  The following information is presented for information purposes only and is not intended to create any contract or agreement, and its contents are subject to addition, deletion, and change without prior notice.

1.Name:

Peggy Mason

 

Primary Appointment:

NPP

 

Secondary appointments:

Cmte on Neurobiology

 

2.Proposed rank:

PROFESSOR

 

3.Proposed track:

RESEARCH SCHOLAR (TENURE)

LAY SUMMARY:

Dr. Mason studies how the brain works to modulate the sensation of pain and focuses on key areas of the brain stem. It is important to understand these neural mechanisms that alter the quality of pain perception for several reasons. There are obvious clinical implications that need no further elaboration. Also, pain is an essential and protective function that needs to be better understood. It is risky to under-react and expensive to over-react to pain, and yet modulation of pain perception occurs.  It does so under very tight constraints that allow coordination between the reaction to pain and fundamental body processes that are essential to life.  In particular, Dr. Mason has shown that brain stem neurons involved in pain perception do not respond only to painful stimuli, which is the old idea that she has overthrown, but instead are involved in a more integrative function that involves numerous autonomic functions, such as micturition.  As a follow up to this, she then showed that the animalŐs response to pain is itself modulated by certain autonomic functions, again, such as micturition, and this is a key correlate between single neuron behavior and the behavior of the whole animal. Overall, these data have overturned existing dogma and replaced it with a new theoretical framework for understanding how pain is processed by the brain. Dr. MasonŐs laboratory leads the field in trying to understand how pain modulation fits in with the control of basic homeostatic or vegetative functions. Beyond her very productive research enterprise, she chairs the Committee on Neurobiology, the home to a successful graduate program that has been continually funded by NIH for the past 26 years. She also directs and teaches in the 100-hour basic neurobiology course required of first year medical students; she also teaches 40% of graduate school class on systems neurobiology.

 

Journal Editorial Board:

Journal of Neurophysiology (Associate Editor)                                                                                   2003-

Ad hoc reviewer (Journals):

Nature, J. Neurosci., J. Comp. Neurol., J. Physiol., Neuroscience, J. Pharm. Exp. Ther., Pain, Exp. Brain Res., Amer. J. Physiol.

Ad hoc reviewer (Grants):

National Institutes of Health:  NINDS - Neurological Sciences 2 Study Section                    6/96

National Institutes of Health:  NINDS - Neurological Sciences 2 Study Section                    6/97

National Institutes of Health:  IFCN 4 Fellowship SEP                                                                        8/98

National Institutes of Health:  IFCN 4                                                                                                         6/99

National Institutes of Health:  NIA                                                                                                                8/02

National Institutes of Health:  NIGMS                                                                                                         4/03

National Institutes of Health:  NIGMS                                                                                                        7/04

National Institutes of Health:  ZRG1 SEP                                                                                                  3/05

Awards and Honors:

Member, Society for Neuroscience Program Committee                                                      2001-2004

Member, Faculty of 1000                                                                                                               2001- current

Professional Societies:

Society for Neuroscience                                                                                                                 1984-current

International Association for the Study of Pain                                                                     1984-current

American Pain Society                                                                                                                      1992-current

AAAS                                                                                                                                                        1989-current

American Physiological Society                                                                                                   1993-current

 

 

All presentations listed below were invited and this list only includes those that occurred at my present rank:

Sleep and Pain Conference (plenary speaker), Emory University                                        1999

Raphe: Pain and Autonomic Coordination Symposium at American Physiological Society's Experimental Biology Conference, (chair and speaker), Washington DC                 1999

Medullary Raphe: Cardiovascular and Nociceptive Modulation Symposium at Neural Mechanisms in Cardiovascular Regulation, a FASEB Conference, (organizer, chair and speaker), Saxton River, VT                                                                                                                 1999

Michigan State University (Neuroscience Program)                                                                    1999

University of Texas - Galveston (Dept. of Anatomy and Neuroscience)                          1999

Stanford Medical School (Dept. of Comparative Medicine)                                                    1999

Harvard Medical School (Pathology)                                                                                                 2004

American Headache Society (plenary speaker), Vancouver, BC, Canada                        2004

University of Maryland Dental School                                                                                              2005

Merck (Rahway, NJ)                                                                                                                                  2005

University of California San Francisco (Pain Group)                                                                  2005

Visceral Pain Processing: Mindblowing New Perspectives at American Pain Society's Conference, (speaker), Boston, MA                                                                                                2005

Northwestern (Physiology)                                                                                                                      2005

University of Iowa                                                                                                                                       2005