UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Janine Kwapis, assistant professor of biology at Penn State, has been appointed as the first Paul Berg Early Career Professor in the Biological Sciences in recognition of her research contributions, teaching, and service to the Department of Biology and the Eberly College of Science.
The professorship was created through an endowment established by the late Paul Berg, a 1948 Penn State graduate who was named a Distinguished Alumnus in 1974 and earned the Nobel Prize in 1980 for developing a method to map the structure and function of DNA.
The purpose of the early career professorship is to provide the holder with financial support and encouragement during the initial years of their academic careers.
“I am thrilled that Dr. Kwapis has been awarded the Paul Berg Early Career Professorship in the Biological Sciences,” said Beth McGraw, professor and department head of biology. “Her research into the basis of memory formation and storage is groundbreaking and very worthy of this honor.”
Kwapis uses a combination of behavioral techniques, molecular analyses, and genetic and epigenetic manipulations to understand how long-term memories are formed, stored, and updated in the brain as well as how these processes change during aging.
Her lab is currently exploring how epigenetic regulation — reversible changes to gene expression that do not alter the DNA sequence itself — of a circadian clock gene can alter memory across the day/night cycle. Her work suggests that disruption of this process in the old brain leads to age-related memory decline in mice. The Kwapis lab is also studying the molecular mechanisms that support memory modification in the young and old brain and are investigating how epigenetic modifications might contribute to the lasting effects of trauma in disorders like PTSD.
Kwapis’ previous awards and honors include a Junior Faculty Grant from the American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR) and Glenn Foundations in 2021, a Whitehall Foundation Award in 2020, and a recent five-year R01 research grant awarded from the National Institute on Aging in 2022. She was also awarded a prestigious K99/R00 from NIH that supported her research when she started her faculty position at Penn State in 2019.
Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State, Kwapis was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Irvine, from 2014 to 2018. She completed a bachelor’s degree in psychology at Alma College in 2006 and master’s and doctoral degrees in behavioral neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2010 and 2013, respectively.