Dr. Anna Gukovskaya, PhD, is a Professor-in-Residence in the Department of Medicine,
David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California Los Angeles, and Research Career Scientist, Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Research. She is Director of the Pancreatic Research Group at UCLA/VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System. She graduated from Saratov University in Russia (former Soviet Union) with BSci in chemical physics, got her PhD degree in biochemistry at Moscow University, and then, Doctor of Science degree in cell biology at the Institute of Cytology, USSR Academy of Sciences. She worked for many years at the Institute of Biological Physics, USSR Academy of Sciences (in Pushchino, near Moscow) on biophysical properties of nucleic acids and, later, on signaling mechanisms of T cell activation. In 1991 she had her first encounter with the West during a Visiting Professor sojourn at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada (in the laboratory of Dr. Sergio Grinstein). In 1992 she emigrated to the United States to work with Dr. Stephen Pandol on exocrine pancreas cell biology and pathophysiology. Since 1994, her research has been funded by the NIH and VA, and the focus of her group, first at UC San Diego and then UCLA, has been on molecular and cellular mechanisms of pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer. Her research was instrumental in revealing i) how injured acinar cells trigger the inflammatory response of pancreatitis; ii) the regulation of trypsinogen activation by infiltrating immune cells; iii) modalities of parenchymal cell death, such as apoptosis, in pancreatitis; and more recently, iv) how the dysfunction of acinar cell organellar network (particularly mitochondrial and lysosomal/autophagy pathways) initiates and drives pancreatitis. She has published 163 research papers, reviews and book chapters, mentored 7 PhD students and more than 80 MD and PhD postdoctoral fellows, trainees, and students from both the US and all over the world.