G. Heiner Sell Lectureship

“The Translational Flywheel is Spinning: Therapeutic Acute Intermittent Hypoxia and Spinal Cord Injury”

The 2027 Distinguished G. Heiner Sell Lecture of ASIA will be presented by Gordon S. Mitchell, PhD, Preeminence Professor of Neuroscience and Physical Therapy, Director of Breathing Research and Therapeutics Center and Deputy Director of the McKnight Brain Institute, at the University of Florida.

Dr. Mitchell received his PhD in Developmental and Cell Biology from the University of California at Irvine, followed by postdoctoral work at the Max Planck Institute for Experimental Medicine in Germany. He then moved to the University of Wisconsin, where he became a faculty member and advanced through the ranks; for 17 years, he served as Chair of a multidisciplinary biomedical science department. In late 2014, he joined the University of Florida as a Preeminence Professor of Neuroscience and Physical Therapy, and founding director of Breathing Research and Therapeutics Center. There, he also serves as Deputy Director of the McKnight Brain Institute. Dr. Mitchell has received many research awards, including an NIH MERIT Award, Steenbock Professorship in Behavioral and Neural Science, Special Lecturer at the Society for Neuroscience, and Julius H. Comroe Distinguished Lectureship of the American Physiologial Society.

His research concerns fundamental mechanisms of plasticity in respiratory motor neurons, and application of that knowledge to develop new treatments for neurological disorders that cause paralysis. He discovered that intermittent exposure to low oxygen, or therapeutic acute intermittent hypoxia (tAIH), elicits plasticity in spinal motor neurons, and inspired translation of tAIH to improve breathing, walking, hand/arm function and swallow in people living with spinal cord injury.

The G. Heiner Sell Lectureship was inaugurated in 1982, following the untimely death of Dr. Sell the previous year.  At that time, Dr. Sell was the President-Elect of ASIA. The association wanted to memorialize him by presenting this named lecture as the keynote of its annual conference.

The 2027 Sell Lecture “The Translational Flywheel is Spinning: Therapeutic Acute Intermittent Hypoxia and Spinal Cord Injury” will be presented by Dr. Mitchell on the first day of the 2027 Annual Scientific Meeting, March 5-7 in Charlotte, North Carolina.

 

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