Donald Bers is Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Pharmacology at the University of California, Davis School of Medicine (since 2008). He also holds the Joseph Silva Chair for Cardiovascular Research and is Director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at UC Davis. He graduated from the University of Colorado, Boulder (1974) and did Ph.D. studies in Physiology at UCLA in 1978, followed by postdoctoral study at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland (1979-80). He returned to UCLA and then as an Assistant Professor at UC Riverside (1982) where he rose to Professor and Associate Dean of Biomedical Sciences. He was recruited in 1992 to Loyola University Chicago as Chair of Physiology, and De-Pauw Endowed Chair in Cardiovascular Research, where he rebuilt a strong collaborative research program. In 2008 he moved to his current position at UC Davis where he also rebuilt a department as a highly collaborative, productive and diverse research faculty. Oxford University also selected him as the Newton-Abraham Professor in 2019, spending six months back in the UK.
His research has focused on cardiac Na and Ca transport, electrophysiology, CaM, CaMKII and adrenergic signaling, E-C coupling, myofilament activation, mitochondrial Ca/energetics, GPCR signaling, and contractile dysfunction and arrhythmogenesis in heart failure and diabetes. His group also creates detailed computational models of ion transport, electrophysiology and signaling that integrate these properties to enhance quantitative mechanistic understanding of physiological and pathological function. Dr Bers has a productive publications track record (>550 papers), h-index=141 (>75,000 citations) and strong NIH grant funding for >40 years. This has led to over 700 symposium and seminar presentations around the world and his recruitment to numerous editorial boards (including Senior Editor for The Journal of Physiology 2011-21) and extensive grant review service for numerous agencies. He has been an effective leader of large research groups (e.g. a 10-year NIH Program Project Grant and as Chair of academic departments at three Universities. He has trained >100 Ph.D. students, postdocs and junior faculty (~50% female and from 34 countries) and among his numerous honours, was awarded the Eric N. Olson Mentoring Award from the International Society for Heart Research in 2023.