A. Kimberley McAllister

A. Kimberley McAllister is an American cellular and molecular neuroscientist who specializes in synapse biology and neuroimmunology. She is director of a center for Neuroscience and a Professor of Neurology and Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior and the UC Davis Institute for Psychedelics and Neurotherapeutics.

Early life and education
McAllister grew up in Great Falls, Virginia. She studied biology through internships with John Trott. McAllister pursued neurobiology research at Duke University in 1992 in the laboratory of Lawrence C. Katz.

Academic career
McAllister was trained as a developmental neurobiologist by Lawrence C. Katz and Donald C. Lo and studied the role for neurotrophins in regulating dendritic growth of pyramidal neurons in the developing visual cortex. During that time, she adapted biolistic transfection for use in transfecting neurons in organotypic slices.

During the summer of 1998, she was a Grass Fellow in Neurophysiology at the Marine Biology Laboratory at Woods Hole.

Her team made discoveries about the initial mechanisms of synapse formation. Her lab also studies how “immune” molecules, such as major histocompatibility complex I molecules and cytokines, regulate the initial establishment of synaptic connections during brain development as well as contribute to synapse loss in Alzheimer's disease. McAllister's team has led efforts to improve reproducibility in rodent models of maternal immune activation (MIA). Through the interdisciplinary Conte Center that she co-directs, her group has identified biomarkers in female mice before pregnancy and following MIA during gestation that predict susceptibility and resilience to schizophrenia- and autism-related behavioral and neurochemical alterations in offspring.

Service
McAllister currently serves as a member of the finance committee for the Society for Neuroscience.

Teaching
McAllister has trained 10 pre-doctoral and 13 post-doctoral fellows and more than 60 undergraduates and 13 post-bacs. She has taught courses for both undergraduates and graduate students and is the founding director of the UC Davis Learning, Memory, and Plasticity (LaMP) Training Program.

Awards and honors

 * Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2001–2003)
 * John Merck Scholars Award (2003–2007)
 * NARSAD Independent Investigator Award (2005–2007)
 * Society for Neuroscience Young Investigator Award (2006)
 * UC Davis Chancellor's Fellow Award (2007)
 * UC Davis RISE (Research Investments in Science and Engineering) Award (2012)
 * UC Davis Foundation Faculty and Staff Stewardship Award (2022)