Medical School Faculty Member Honored As Pew Scholar

Valentin Dragoi, Ph.D., assistant professor of neurobiology and anatomy at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston, has been named a 2004 Pew Scholar, a distinction conferred upon just 20 scientists nationally every year.

Valentin Dragoi, Ph.D.

Dragoi studies how the visual cortex processes and updates information – in other words, he studies how the brain “sees” items and how our perception of the world changes over time as new information is added.

Dragoi and his research team accomplish this by recording the activity of multiple neurons in the brains of alert laboratory animals as they perform specific behavioral tasks. They compare these findings with human psychophysics and computer models to determine patterns of neural activity relevant to visual behavior.

“I believe that this research can possibly lead to a virtual reality-type of sight for the blind and for those who experience low vision,” Dragoi said. “We have a novel approach – we monitor alert animals and alert humans and compare what they perceive over time. Needless to say, performing imaging tests on alert animals and humans is challenging. But this research shows real promise for practical applications.”

Dragoi, a native of Romania, received his bachelor’s degree in computer science in 1989. He left Romania in 1992 and went on to earn a doctorate from Duke University in 1997 and completed postgraduate work from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined the faculty at UT a year ago.

The Pew Charitable Trusts awards a $240,000 grant over four years to support the research of each Pew Scholar. A national advisory committee selects the scientists based on “outstanding promise in the basic or clinical sciences.”

Dragoi is the fourth scientist at the health science center to be named a Pew Scholar in the last six years. The others are: Hong Zhou, Ph.D., associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, 1999; C. S. Raman, Ph.D., assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, 2002; and Ambro van Hoof, Ph.D., assistant professor of microbiology and molecular genetics, 2003. All four hold appointments in the Medical School and the UT Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston.

— By Shannon Rasp, Public Affairs