Gabrielle Fredman, PhD, Named Chair of Molecular and Cellular Physiology
Albany Medical College Professor Gabrielle Fredman, PhD, has been appointed chair of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Physiology (MCP), overseeing the department’s research and educational missions and faculty development and recruitment.
“Dr. Fredman is an accomplished scientist, mentor, and collaborative leader whose vision for MCP builds on the department’s considerable strengths while positioning it for its next chapter,” said Alan S. Boulos, MD ’94, MHCDS, the Lynne and Mark D. Groban, MD ’67 Distinguished Dean of Albany Medical College. “Her commitment to scientific excellence, faculty and trainee development, and multidisciplinary research has been and will continue to be tremendous assets to the department and the College.”
She succeeds Harold A. Singer, PhD, who led the department for nearly three decades and who will remain with the College as chair emeritus of MCP and in his role as interim chair of the Department of Neuroscience and Experimental Therapeutics.
“MCP has been my professional home for more than a decade, and I am deeply honored to have the opportunity to lead this extraordinary department,” said Dr. Fredman. “Dr. Singer has built an exceptional department with a culture that values scientific rigor, collaboration, mentorship, and innovation. My vision is to build on that strength and scale what has made MCP so successful by expanding multidisciplinary discovery, creating new partnerships, and ensuring that outstanding discovery science continues to drive innovation to improve human health.”
Dr. Fredman earned her doctoral degree from Boston University and completed postdoctoral training at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School, where she studied the chemical biology of lipid mediators in inflammation resolution. She subsequently trained at Columbia University Medical Center, extending this work to understand how failed resolution contributes to atherosclerosis.
Since joining MCP in 2015, she has built an internationally recognized research program that investigates how the body resolves inflammation and how failure of these processes contributes to cardiovascular diseases and aging, with the goal of identifying new therapeutic approaches that promote tissue repair without compromising host defense.
“Dr. Fredman’s research has been catalytic for multidisciplinary discovery across Albany Medical College, and she has played a central role in developing MCP initiatives that bring discovery scientists, clinicians, trainees, and regional research partners together,” said Dr. Singer. “She has a vision for MCP, a professional network, and the leadership strengths that can bring the department to new heights.”
More than 60 scientists comprise Albany Medical College’s four research departments, focused on infectious disease, cancer, molecular science, and neuroscience. Together with medical students, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows studying biomedical science, they search for better treatments for a wide range of diseases and work to ensure that discoveries made in the laboratories are translated into medical innovations at patients’ bedsides.