Pam England never dreamed her career as a chemist would lead to modeling for a billboard photo shoot. "I'm not the kind of person that likes to be the center of attention," explains England, an assistant professor in the departments of pharmaceutical chemistry and cellular and molecular pharmacology. But two different UCSF faculty members, including Mary Anne Koda-Kimble, dean of the UCSF School of Pharmacy, recommended her for an advertising campaign touting UCSF's new Mission Bay campus.

"Pam England is a terrific young scientist and the perfect choice for this particular Mission Bay billboard," says Koda-Kimble. "It will be seen by people throughout the city, many of them young girls. The picture will say that exciting science is under way at Mission Bay. Just as important, it will say to girls that they can grow up to be explorers, that no frontier in science is out of their reach." Eventually, England's sense of adventure took over. "I did it mainly for the experience," she says. "It's a pretty non-scientific thing to do, but it was kind of fun."

Now, England's likeness appears on a billboard high above San Francisco at 3rd Street and Mission Bay Drive for Catellus Development Corp.'s media campaign of the 303-acre redevelopment project. For several reasons, however, few people — even her own mother — will recognize the woman in the photo. First there's the photo's artistic angle, showing her from the side and back. Then there are the flasks full of brightly colored liquids, starchy white lab coat and glasses. "They thought a scientist should be wearing glasses."

England boasts that she did manage to talk advertisers into keeping the realistic labeling found on the petri dish she held for the photo. "They wanted to airbursh out the black line. I told them that if a scientist saw that they would know it was a real plate."

England is now working and living within sight of the billboard. Last July, she moved into her new loft less than a mile from the new campus. Her lab moved six months later. She now enjoys runs along the Embarcadero and hitting golf balls at the local driving range, which in a few years will make way for new facilities. "Add a movie theater and I'll be all set."

England is also enjoying her new lab space. "I will have better space and a better setup." England says there are so many benefits to moving that it is worth the temporary separation from some of her current neighbors. " Hopefully, they'll eventually move over. You can't have everything."

Growing up in the San Fernando Valley, England did not aspire to be a scientist. But all the right ingredients were there. "I liked there to be a right answer, one right answer. You get that in the sciences." She enjoyed the hard sciences in high school, but admits chemistry was her worst subject. Even as an undergraduate at UCLA, she expected to just fulfill the requirement that would let her take other science courses. However, a teaching assistant saw and encouraged her talent, making her promise not to drop chemistry until she had taken an upper-division course. "I took the class and I really liked it a lot." England then decided to work in a lab to see what doing research was like. "After that, I was hooked."

Even once she had settled on a major, England enjoyed balancing her chemistry classes with ones in political science and history. She picked these courses by searching the bookstore shelves for interesting reads that were required for other classes. "The books were so cool," she says. Eventually, she realized she had earned nearly enough credits for a second degree. In addition to her undergraduate degree in chemistry, she holds one in communications studies. England studied synthetic organic chemistry at MIT. Fortunately, her advisor was taking his first steps towards addressing biological questions. "It was chemical biology — a new thing in most chemistry departments." England herself became fascinated with neuroscience at that time. After earning her doctorate, she spent the summer at Woods Hole taking a neuroscience class. She then did two postdoctoral fellowships in neurobiology at Caltech and Stanford, accepting a job at UCSF in 2000.

England's current research is at the interface of chemistry and neurobiology. "The hope is that chemistry is going to be able to answer questions that other techniques can't answer." Using the tools of a chemist, England studies the structure and function of ion channels, the selective pores in a cell wall that regulate the flow of ions such as potassium. The passage of these ions is critical to the transmission of nerve impulses throughout the body. England also uses her chemical expertise to study the molecular bases for learning and memory. "There have been over 100 molecules that have been implicated in learning and memory in the hippocampus. We don't know how those 100 molecules are interacting to form memories."

England is working to reveal the interactions between these molecules by using techniques developed by organic chemists, including UCSF's Kevan Shokat. "If you could identify the connections between these molecules you'd have a much better idea of how learning and memory work," England says. And that knowledge could help identify potential drug targets to treat memory disorders associated with aging.

The cutting-edge nature of England's work is what makes her the perfect person to represent the future of UCSF and is likely the reason she was chosen for the Mission Bay ad, says Shokat. "I can't think of another chemist in the country that does neurobiology at the level she's doing it," says Shokat, professor of molecular pharmacology at UCSF.

Shokat says England's in-depth knowledge of neurobiology is one of her greatest strengths. "Many chemists look towards biology as a way to demonstrate some kind of chemical technique that they have developed and they don't spend the time with biologists to understand what the big questions are," Shokat explained. "By becoming a neurobiologist, she's not just reading review articles. She's really into the details. I think that is what is going to ensure that she succeeds."

Source: Camille Mojica Rey

Last updated January 28, 2005

Pam England, assistant professor in the departments of pharmaceutical chemistry and cellular and molecular pharmacology, is part of the first wave of researchers who will move to UCSF Mission Bay.