Allan Tobin

Helped start the CHDI Foundation, which funds studies on Huntington’s disease. Allan J. Tobin was born in Manchester, New Hampshire, on August 22, 1942. He received his S.B. in Humanities and Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his Ph.D. in biophysics from Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in biophysics at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel, and a postdoctoral fellowship in biology at M.I.T. In 1971, Tobin joined the faculty of Harvard University, and then moved to UCLA in 1975 as assistant professor of biology. As part of the effort to consolidate neuroscience within the UCLA College, he moved to the department of physiological science, where he became professor of neuroscience. In 1994, he was concurrently appointed professor of neurology. Over his 28 years at UCLA, Tobin held varied appointments both at UCLA, and in the scientific community. At UCLA, he was chair of the Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program from 1989-1995, Director of the Brain Research Institute from 1995-2003, cofounder of the NeuroEngineering Training Program, and from 1996 to 2003, the Eleanor Leslie Chair in Neuroscience. He was a member of the Molecular Biology Institute and, of course, the Brain Research Institute. Outside of UCLA, Tobin was also Scientific Director of the Hereditary Disease Foundation and a member of its Science Advisory Board, as well as a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Dystonia Medical Research Foundation and the American Paralysis Association (later the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation). He also was a member of the Academic Advisory Council of University of Judaism and of the Neurology C Study Section of the NIH. He also chaired the strategic planning committee on neurodegenerative disorders for NINDS. Tobin’s research laboratory at UCLA used molecular and cellular techniques to study the function, regulation, and degeneration of GABA-producing neurons in the brain and spinal cord, in order to address basic mechanistic questions important for Huntington's disease, Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, and spinal cord injury. In addition to publishing over one hundred scientific papers, he is the coauthor of Asking About Life, a prize-winning university biology textbook whose three editions sold more than 150,000 copies. Tobin retired from UCLA at the end of 2003, In 2003, Tobin joined the High Q Foundation (now called the CHDI Foundation), a privately funded organization dedicated to finding treatments for Huntington’s Disease. At CHDI, he continues his efforts to catalyze interactions among basic and clinical researchers, chemists and biologists, and neuroscientists and molecular biologists in the hope that they will lead to interventions that will slow or stop the progression of neurodegenerative diseases.