Tara Keck

Tara Keck
Born (1978-11-26) November 26, 1978 (age 46)
Winston-Salem, North Carolina, U.S.
Alma materHarvard University
Boston University
Known forSynaptic plasticity in vivo
Scientific career
Fields
  • Neuroscience
  • Physiology
  • Pharmacology
InstitutionsProfessor of Neuroscience at University College London
Websiteiris.ucl.ac.uk

Tara Keck (born November 26, 1978, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina) is an American-British neuroscientist and Professor of Neuroscience and Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow, at University College London working in the Department of Neuroscience, Physiology, and Pharmacology. She is the Vice-Dean International for the Faculty of Life Sciences.[1][2] She studies experience-dependent synaptic plasticity, its effect on behaviour[3] and how it changes during ageing and age-related diseases.[4] She has worked in collaboration with the United Nations Population Fund on approaches for healthy ageing.[5][6] Her recent work has focused on loneliness in older people, with a focus on gender.[7][8][9][10] She was named a UNFPA Generations and Gender Fellow in 2022.[11]

Education

Professor Keck attended Harvard University from 1997 to 2001, majoring in bioengineering and then earned a PhD in biomedical engineering from Boston University in 2005, working with John White.[12] She grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania and attended Fairview High School.[13]

Career

Professor Keck completed her postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Munich, Germany with Tobias Bonhoeffer and Mark Hübener.[14] She received an MRC Career Development Fellowship from the Medical Research Council (United Kingdom) in 2010[15] and subsequently started her own lab at King's College London in the MRC Centre for Developmental Neurobiology.[16] In 2014, she moved her lab to University College London.[17] In 2018, she was awarded a Senior Research Fellowship from the Wellcome Trust.[18] Professor Keck's work focuses on different forms of synaptic plasticity in the intact brain, with a focus on homeostatic plasticity and changes in plasticity during ageing and age-related diseases.[4] Her work has demonstrated that homeostatic mechanisms in vivo may be implemented at a network level, rather than a single cell level.[19][20][21][22] She is a recipient of the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award and the Wekerle Foundation Award[23], and was a finalist for the Max Planck Society Neuroscience Research Award.

References

  1. ^ UCL (2018-01-08). "People". UCL Faculty of Life Sciences. Retrieved 2023-04-28.
  2. ^ UCL (2017-06-29). "Contact us". UCL Global. Retrieved 2023-04-28.
  3. ^ "keck-tara". www.ucl.ac.uk. 22 June 2017.
  4. ^ a b "Failures of neuronal homeostasis in Alzheimer's Disease and ageing | British Council". www.britishcouncil.org.il. Retrieved 2020-10-17.
  5. ^ "Healthy Ageing Centres are important for older people in Bosnia and Herzegovina". UNFPA Bosnia and Herzegovina. 2020-09-30. Retrieved 2020-10-17.
  6. ^ "Older people regularly visiting healthy ageing centres live healthier, longer lives, new study finds". UNFPA Bosnia and Herzegovina. 2020-10-01. Retrieved 2020-10-17.
  7. ^ "Providing support for day-to-day tasks most effective in reducing loneliness in older people, new UNFPA study finds". UNFPA EECA. 2022-01-27. Retrieved 2022-02-06.
  8. ^ UCL (28 January 2022). "Support for day-to-day tasks could reduce loneliness in older people". UCL News. Retrieved 2022-02-06.
  9. ^ "Support for day-to-day tasks could reducing loneliness in older people". Mirage News. 2022-01-28. Retrieved 2022-02-06.
  10. ^ London, University College. "Support for day-to-day tasks could reduce loneliness in older people". medicalxpress.com. Retrieved 2022-02-06.
  11. ^ "Our Board". HARVARD W3D. Retrieved 2022-06-14.
  12. ^ "Lab Alumni". Neuronal Dynamics Lab - John A. White. Retrieved 2020-11-25.
  13. ^ "Roaring into Tomorrow". www.fairviewschools.org.
  14. ^ "Bonhoeffer Lab Alumni".
  15. ^ "MRC Career Development Award - Research Portal, King's College, London". kclpure.kcl.ac.uk.
  16. ^ "Tara Keck - Research Portal, King's College, London". kclpure.kcl.ac.uk. Retrieved 2020-05-27.
  17. ^ UCL (2019-02-08). "keck-tara". UCL Division of Biosciences. Retrieved 2020-05-27.
  18. ^ "Inhibitory mechanisms of homeostatic plasticity in vivo | Wellcome". wellcome.org. Retrieved 2020-10-17.
  19. ^ Barnes, Samuel J.; Sammons, Rosanna P.; Jacobsen, R. Irene; Mackie, Jennifer; Keller, Georg B.; Keck, Tara (2015-06-03). "Subnetwork-Specific Homeostatic Plasticity in Mouse Visual Cortex In Vivo". Neuron. 86 (5): 1290–1303. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2015.05.010. ISSN 1097-4199. PMC 4460189. PMID 26050045.
  20. ^ Barnes, Samuel J.; Franzoni, Eleonora; Jacobsen, R. Irene; Erdelyi, Ferenc; Szabo, Gabor; Clopath, Claudia; Keller, Georg B.; Keck, Tara (2017-11-15). "Deprivation-Induced Homeostatic Spine Scaling In Vivo Is Localized to Dendritic Branches that Have Undergone Recent Spine Loss". Neuron. 96 (4): 871–882.e5. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2017.09.052. ISSN 1097-4199. PMC 5697914. PMID 29107520.
  21. ^ Barnes, Samuel J; Keller, Georg B; Keck, Tara (2022-12-14). Goda, Yukiko; Chen, Lu; Hengen, Keith B (eds.). "Homeostatic regulation through strengthening of neuronal network-correlated synaptic inputs". eLife. 11: e81958. doi:10.7554/eLife.81958. ISSN 2050-084X. PMC 9803349. PMID 36515269. S2CID 251474035.
  22. ^ Barnes, Samuel J; Keller, Georg B; Keck, Tara (2022-12-14). Goda, Yukiko; Chen, Lu; Hengen, Keith B (eds.). "Homeostatic regulation through strengthening of neuronal network-correlated synaptic inputs". eLife. 11: e81958. doi:10.7554/eLife.81958. ISSN 2050-084X. PMC 9803349. PMID 36515269.
  23. ^ "Tara Keck and Tatiana Tomasi receive Outstanding Paper Award". www.neuro.mpg.de. Retrieved 2020-05-27.