Robert Gereau, Ph.D.

Landis Award for Outstanding Mentorship
Image
photo of Robert Gereau
Institution
Washington University, St. Louis, MO

Dr. Gereau's lab utilizes a combination of approaches to understand the signaling pathways involved in nervous system plasticity that underlies pain sensitization. The lab's mission is to identify novel approaches to reverse this maladaptive plasticity to provide new therapeutic strategies to reduce pain and its impact on patient quality of life. Trainees spoke of the collegial, supportive, and hard-working lab environment that he cultivated, where they felt empowered to generate robust free expression of ideas and actively participate in discussions of everybody’s work, while treating one another with kindness and respect. Dr. Gereau was commended for his abilities to blend exceptional scientific standards with empathy and encouragement, as well as his focus on prioritizing the scientific questions that drive the research, not the technology. Trainees articulated that the product of his lab was people, not papers – by prioritizing people, Dr. Gereau generated great science.