Jianguo G. Gu, M.B., Ph.D., the Edward A. Ernst, M.D. Endowed Professor in the UAB Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine, is a neuroscientist with a strong record of accomplishments in neuroscience and pain research. He is the founding editor of Molecular Pain, an international scientific journal, and has served as editor-in-chief since 2004.
Born in Nanjing, a capital city of Jiangsu Province in China, Jianguo G. Gu enrolled in Shanghai Medical University (also known as Fudan University Shanghai Medical College) in 1979, studied medicine and pharmacology, and graduated with a bachelor's degree in medical science (M.B.) in 1985. He spent the next four years at China Pharmaceutical University, where he studied clinical pharmacology under the supervision of Professor Dezai Dai. In 1989, he went to Canada and entered a graduate program at the University of Manitoba to study neuropharmacology, where he received research training from Professor Jonathon Geiger, a world-renowned neuropharmacologist, and obtained his Ph.D. in 1994.
Dr. Gu then spent three years as a postdoctoral fellow and one year as a research associate under the supervision of Professor Amy MacDermott, a world-renowned sensory physiologist, to study neuronal and molecular mechanisms of pain at the College of Physicians & Surgeons of Columbia University in New York. His research work at Columbia University was fruitful and some of his research findings there received helpful comments from his colleague Eric R. Kandel, the Nobel Laureate in 2000. In 1998, he took a tenure-track faculty position at the University of Florida, where he established a research laboratory in the McKnight Brain Institute and Department of Oral Surgery. He was promoted to tenured associate professor in 2005 and dedicated himself to research, teaching, and service at the University of Florida. Dr. Gu was recruited as a tenured full professor with the Centennial Professorship by the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Cincinnati in 2009. He continued his research, teaching, and service at the University of Cincinnati for five years before he was recruited as a tenured full professor and appointed as the director for pain research in the Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) in 2014. In February 2015, he was appointed to the position of Edward A. Ernst, M.D. Endowed Professor.