Kelsey Martin

Kelsey Martin is a professor of biological chemistry, psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences and the current dean of David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.She is the first woman to be named Dean of the UCLA medical school, and is among just a handful of female medical school Deans in the United States She is a physician-scientist known for her work on the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying memory.

Martin majored in English and American Language and Literature at Harvard University, earning her B.A. cum laude in 1979. She spent two years volunteering with the Peace Corps in Zaire before resuming her post-graduate education. Martin returned to the United States and obtained her MD/PhD degree from Yale University in 1992. Her graduate thesis work investigated the nuclear transport of influenza virus ribonucleoproteins in the laboratory of Ari Helenius. She went on to postdoctoral training with Eric Kandel at the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior at Columbia University. At Columbia University, she made the seminal discovery that a single axonal branch can be the substrate for synaptic plasticity associated with learning and memory.

In 2016, Martin was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In 2016, Martin was elected to the National Academy of Medicine.

Kelsey Martin is the daughter of Dr. George Martin, professor of pathology emeritus at the University of Washington, and a prominent researcher in the study of human aging.