Popescu Elected to Biophysical Society Leadership Post

As one of 12 council members, Popescu will help lead the 57-year-old society’s activities, which include publishing the Biophysical Journal.

“I plan to add my energy, passion and experience to maintaining and developing innovative programs that support the dissemination of new biophysical knowledge and technology,” she says.

She also will work to assist members with professional development across their entire career arc. The organization’s diverse members work in numerous cross-disciplinary areas — including bioenergetics, molecular biophysics and nanoscale biophysics — in academia, private industry and government agencies worldwide.

In addition, Popescu will support advocacy efforts for sustained, predictable research funding. The group advises the National Institutes of Health on various policies affecting the scientific community. Recent consultations, for example, have focused on data reproducibility, data sharing and open access.

As a member of the society for more than 10 years, Popescu has served as an invited speaker and a student poster competition judge, among other roles. She also has organized several career development events at the annual meeting.

Popescu was installed as a council member at the society’s 59th annual meeting in Baltimore in February, a research forum involving more than 7,000 scientists and students.

During the meeting, she presented “Glycinergic GluN1/GluN2A Channels: NMDA Receptors in Name Only” as part of a symposium on glutamate receptor channels.

The Popescu lab has shed light on the activation mechanism of the synaptic brain protein N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor. Overactivity in this receptor has been implicated in neurodegenerative conditions and mental illness.