The $38,000 grant allows Hall to continue her research on biological proteins, called voltage-sensitive ion channels, that may be useful targets for treating severe pain in cancer patients.

Hall has used the fruit fly as a model genetic system to identify a new type of protein, called tipE. She has preliminary evidence that homologues of this protein exist in higher organisms and she will use the grant to determine whether this protein regulates the sodium channels of higher organisms. Hall is spending this year as a visiting professor at the University of California-Irvine, where she is using electrophysiology to more closely study the protein's regulatory properties.

Hall's research also has applications to other potential products, including production of novel biotechnology-based insecticides and cardiovascular drugs.

A UB faculty member since 1989 and former chair of the Department of Biochemical Pharmacology, Hall previously held faculty positions at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

She is a recipient of a Method to Extend Research in Time (MERIT) Award from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health.

A McKnight Scholar in Neuroscience, she was also the recipient of the Jacob Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award and the Monique Weill-Caulier Career Scientist Award.

Hall graduated from Bucknell University and earned her doctorate at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

In addition to serving on the editorial board of the Journal of Neurogenetics and as executive editor of Invertebrate Neurobiology, she has authored numerous scientific papers and has presented many invited symposia. Her professional memberships include the Society for Neuroscience, the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy, Rho Chi and the New York Academy of Science. She directs the Oligonucleotide Synthesis and DNA Sequencing Facility run by UB's Center for Advanced Molecular Biology and Immunology.