Melina Hale

Melina Hale is an American neuroscientist. She studies zebrafish to understand how the brain communicates with muscles to generate movement..

Hale received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1998. She is a professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy and Neurobiology and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Chicago where she is also the Dean of faculty affairs..

She has served as the chair of the Division of Comparative Biomechanics for the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB). She was the keynote speaker at the Southeast regional meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB).

In 2015, Hale's team demonstrated that fish use fins to sense their environment in order to swim

Hale has received the following awards:

• Wayne C. Booth Graduate Student Prize for Excellence in Teaching at the University of Chicago

• Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching and Mentoring at the University of Chicago
• National Science Foundation CAREER award
• National Academies/Howard Hughes Medical Institute Education Fellow

• Hale ME, Long JH Jr, McHenry MJ, Westneat MW. (2002) Evolution of behavior and neural control of the fast-start escape response. Evolution 56(5):993-1007. PMID:12093034
• Bierman HS, Schriefer JE, Zottoli SJ, Hale ME. (2004) The effects of head and tail stimulation on the withdrawal startle response of the rope fish (Erpetoichthys calabaricus).J Exp Biol. 207(Pt 22):3985-97. PMID:15472029
• Bierman HS, Zottoli SJ, Hale ME. (2009) Evolution of the Mauthner axon cap. Brain Behav Evol. 73(3):174-87. PMID:19494486
• Liu YC, Hale ME. (2014) Alternative forms of axial startle behaviors in fishes. Zoology (Jena). 117(1):36-47. PMID: 24374038
• Hale ME. (2014) Mapping circuits beyond the models: integrating connectomics and comparative neuroscience. Neuron. 83(6):1256-8. Review. PMID: 25233308