Department of Physiology

About The Department of Physiology

What is Physiology?
Physiology is the study of how the activities of genes, cells, tissues and organs are integrated to accomplish the complex functions performed by living organisms. Because of the structural and functional complexity of even simple organisms, physiologists draw upon knowledge available from many different scientific disciplines such as molecular and cellular biology, physics, mathematics, and biochemistry. From a medical perspective, understanding normal function is a prerequisite to understanding disease.

Mission of the Department
The philosophy of the department is that excellence requires intelligence, commitment, intensity of effort, and a nurturing environment. Our primary objective is to provide the resources, ambience and opportunities that foster excellence in scholarship and research among faculty, medical students, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows. This is accomplished by having faculty who are recognized researchers and scholars in their fields, talented and stimulating teachers, and committed to effective intra-and interdepartmental collaboration.

Educational Program
The purpose of our education program is to provide medical and graduate students with a clear understanding of physiological principles, concepts, and mechanisms which form the basis of medical practice and which are at the forefront of our knowledge. Additionally, we strive to provide an approach to learning that will carry over into the students' subsequent education and career. Training in human physiology provides the opportunity to think conceptually and solve problems as one does in medical practice.

Methods used to achieve these goals include didactic lectures, conferences, problem sets, interactive learning using computers, laboratory exercises, individual consultation, and participation in research projects in the laboratories of faculty members. The students have voted our Human Physiology Course to be the outstanding first-year course five times in recent years. The department has also received outstanding department award three times in recent years.

Efficacy of our Graduate Program
Graduates of our program have a strong record of success as they have continued their careers in related areas. Recent Ph.D. graduates hold academic appointments at prestigious medical centers throughout the country.

Extramural Funding
Faculty, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students alike are encouraged and expected to seek outside funding. In 2008-2009, funding from extramural sources reached a high of $5,900,000 (total cost). This includes funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the American Heart Association-Southern Affiliate and National Center, Louisiana Board of Regents, Department of Defense, Sankyo Company, National Science Foundation and American Physiological Society (APS). Departmental faculty participate in the Hypertension and Renal Center of Excellence, which is supported by a major award from the Louisiana Board of Regents and a special $10.8 million grant from NIH to establish a Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) in Hypertension and Renal Biology.

Facilities and Resources
The Department of Physiology is located on the fourth floor of the Medical School Building in the Tulane University Health Sciences Center. There are 10 full-time faculty members, complemented by 18 adjunct faculty whose primary appointments are in other departments or at other institutions. The graduate program has 11 students and there are 12 postdoctoral fellows. Laboratories and offices have been recently renovated and the laboratory space of the department currently comprises 13,000 sq.ft.