Bios

Elise Stanley, a career scientist, obtained her Doctorate in England in 1977. She moved to Johns Hopkins Medical School as a postdoctoral fellow and then Assistant Professor  studying the biology and pathology of the nerve-muscle synapse. A key project was exploring the biological basis of the autoimmune disorder, myasthenia gravis. Stanley moved to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD and set up a research group to study the biology transmitter release at chemical synapses. In 1999 she was recruited to head the Cellular and Molecular Biology Division and to help establish the Toronto Western Research Institute (now Krembil Research Institute). Her main research focused on fundamentals of information transfer at neural synapses and specifically on how individual calcium channels gate the discharge of neurotransmitters. Stanley recently retired and is now a Scientist Emeriti at the University of Toronto and an Affiliated Scientist at the Krembil. Her scientific awards include an NIH Directors Service Award (1997), the University of Toronto Tanenbaum Chair; a founding award from the Canada Research Chair (Tier I) program, and election to the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars (2015). Stanley also has a number of artistic interests. She plays the violin, currently in two community orchestras; competed at the championship level in ballroom dance and, studied Chinese ink painting. Photography has been a life-long passion, beginning in childhood with a Brownie box-camera but eventually graduating to the Sony bridge camera that is her main tool today.