General Biology Seminar

Dr. Portera-Cailliau was born and raised in Madrid, Spain. He obtained a B.A. in Biochemistry & Cell Biology from U.C. San Diego in 1990 (Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa). He then attended the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and obtained an MD-PhD degree in 1997, training under Lee J. Martin and Donald L. Price. After finishing residency training in Neurology at The Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston in 2001, Dr. Portera-Cailliau moved to Columbia University for clinical fellowship training in movement disorders. At the same time he completed two post-doctoral research fellowships, one at Columbia under Rafael Yuste and the other at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory with Karel Svoboda. He joined the UCLA faculty in November 2004 where holds joint appointments in the Departments of Neurology and Neurobiology. His current research focuses on studying the mechanisms of circuit dysfunction in the cerebral cortex of patients with neurodevelopmental disorders, focusing on fragile X syndrome, using cutting edge imaging techniques such as two-photon microscopy. He sees patients in clinic once a week.