Cullinan named Raynor Chair by Father Wild
Dr. William E. Cullinan, associate professor of biomedical sciences, has been appointed to the John P. Raynor, S.J., Chair for the next two academic years. This university chair is appointed by Marquette’s president and was established to honor outstanding teacher-scholars following the retirement of Father Raynor, the 20th president of Marquette, from the Board of Directors of Kimberly-Clark Corp. The chair was later enhanced through the generosity of Helen Way Klingler.
“I am delighted to learn of the appointment to the Raynor Chair, and am grateful to the university, Provost Wake, and to Father Wild for this high honor,” Cullinan says. “The appointment will make it possible to expand the neuroscience research within my laboratory into a new area of great clinical significance, a prospect at which I am most excited. The support of many colleagues has made this possible and to whom I am indebted, including neuroscientists within both the Department of Biomedical Sciences and the Integrative Neuroscience Research Center.”
Nationally recognized for his work in stress neurobiology and functional neuroanatomy, Cullinan’s appointment will allow him to begin a new research effort into neuronal injury while continuing to teach. Cullinan and his collaborators currently focus on brain circuits that mediate stress responsiveness and specifically, neural pathways that regulate the production of a powerful class of hormones that have effects throughout the entire body. One of the effects of these hormones (known as glucocorticoids) is to reduce inflammation and they are given therapeutically immediately following brain and spinal cord injury.
However, the brain’s stress circuitry is also altered following injury and Cullinan plans to study the mechanisms by which these pathways are altered and result in imbalances in glucocorticoid production and release. The results will have implications for the acute treatment of central nervous system injuries as well as for understanding of how the stress system is altered long term.
Cullinan received his Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of Virginia in 1991 and was a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan from 1991 to 1995. He joined the Department of Biomedical Sciences in 1995 and is also an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Neurosurgery at the Medical College of Wisconsin. He received a Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence in 2002. Cullinan has taught courses in anatomy, neuroanatomy and neurochemistry to undergraduate and graduate students, medical students, medical residents, and health care professionals.
