Dr. Monte Westerfield
In his lab that studies Usher syndrome, Dr. Monte Westerfield’s group showed that endoplasmic reticulum stress is the proximal cause of sensory cell death in Usher syndrome, which helped to discover the first known genetic modifier, PDZD7. Dr. Westerfield directs the Zebrafish Core of the Model Organism Screening Center for the Undiagnosed Diseases Network of the NIH. He received his AB degree in physics and biology from Princeton University and his PhD from Duke University Medical School. His postdoctoral training was completed at the Max Planck Institute in Munich, Germany and at Harvard Medical School before he joined the faculty in the Institute of Neuroscience at the University of Oregon. There, he met George Streisinger and began using zebrafish in his research. He established and currently directs ZFIN, the Zebrafish Information Network, and ZIRC, the Zebrafish International Resource Center.
