Michael J. Zigmond, PhD

Michael Zigmond is Associate Director of the Survival Skills and Ethics Program at the University of Pittsburgh, where he is a member of the Pittsburgh Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases and a Professor of Neurology, Psychiatry, and Neurobiology.  He also is the Director of the Morris K. Udall Center of Excellence for Parkinson's Disease Research. 

Dr. Zigmond began developing and testing survival skills workshops in his capacity as the director of a National Institute of Health (NIH)-funded training program in neuroscience in 1985.  Since then, the program has blossomed, and it now includes workshops for trainees and trainers at the local, national, and international levels.

In addition to his work on the Survival Skills and Ethics Program, Dr. Zigmond is an active neuroscientist.  His laboratory explores issues of neuronal death and neuroprotection as they apply to neurodegenerative diseases, particularly Parkinson's disease.  He currently is investigating the influence of stress and exercise on the vulnerability of dopamine-containing neurons to neurotoxins.

Dr. Zigmond was a member of the Institute of Medicine's Committee that produces the report on Integrity in Scientific Research: Creating an Environment that Promotes Responsible Conduct.  He was Secretary of the Society for Neuroscience from 1994-96, Chair of the Social Issues Committee (1999-2002) and chaired the committee charged with developing a code of conduct in writing, reviewing, and publishing (see: www.sfn.org/guidelines/).  He also is a past president of the Association of Neuroscience Departments and Programs.

Dr. Zigmond serves on a number of editorial advisory boards for journals including Science and Engineering Ethics.  He was the senior editor of a textbook, Fundamental Neuroscience (Academic Press, 1998), which includes in its text ethics cases for discussion, and is the current Editor-in-Chief of Progress in Neurobiology.  He is a member of a variety of scientific advisory boards, including that of the Michael J. Fox Foundation, and he currently directs two NIH-training grants in neuroscience.

Selected publications:

Education

Zigmond MJ. Implementing ethics in the professions: Preparing guidelines on scientific communication for the Society for Neuroscience. Science and Engineering Ethics, 92: 191-200, 2003.

Fischer BA and Zigmond MJ. Promoting Responsible Conduct in Research through "Survival Skills" Workshops: Some Mentoring is Best Done in a Crowd. Science and Engineering Ethics , 2001, 7:4, 563-587.

Zigmond MJ. Academic Duty (invited book review). Nature Medicine, 1999.

Fischer BA and Zigmond MJ. Survival Skills for Graduate School and Beyond. In Anderson, M (ed). The Experience of Being in Graduate School: An Exploration. New Directions in Education Series, number 101, San Francisco : Jossey Bass, 1998, pp. 29-40.

Research

Zigmond MJ. When it comes to communications between neurons, synapses are overrated: Insights from an animal model of parkinsonism. Progress in Brain Research, 125: 317-326, 2000.

Zigmond MJ, Burke RE. Pathophysiology of Parkinson's disease. In: Davis KL, Coyle J, Charney D, Nemeroff C (eds), Fifth Generation of Progress. American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, 2002, pp. 1781-1794

Perez RG, Waymire JC, Lin E, Liu JJ, Guo F, Zigmond MJ. A role for a-synuclein in regulation of dopamine biosynthesis. Journal of Neuroscience, 22:3090-3099, 2002.

Cohen AD, Tillerson JL, Smith AD, Schallert T, Zigmond MJ (2002) Neuroprotective effects of prior limb use in 6-hydroxydopamine-treated rats: Possible role of GDNF. Journal of Neurochemistry , 85:299-305.