Erin Schuman

In addition to her research and professorship, Erin Schuman has been committed to promoting the professional advancement of women in the field of neuroscience. Schuman made it a condition of her recruitment to Max Planck that a new child care facility be built on campus. She also spearheaded an initiative outlining changes in recruitment practices aimed at doubling the percentage of female directors in the Max Planck Society's Biology & Medicine Section to 20% by 2020. In 2018, she received the Society for Neuroscience Mika Salpeter Lifetime Achievement Award in for her teaching, mentoring, and advocacy.

The Schuman lab studies the properties of mRNAs and proteins (e.g. the transcriptomes and proteomes) distributed throughout the neuron. Her research has examined how stability in neuronal processes can be brought about by local cell biological processes, like protein synthesis, allowing synapses to respond rapidly and appropriately to changing stimuli. The Schuman lab demonstrated the first functional role for local translation in neurons. In 1996, in the course of exploring how neurotrophins enhance synaptic transmission, Schuman together with graduate student Hyejin Kang made the discovery that local protein synthesis within dendrites is required for this form of synaptic plasticity. She obtained direct proof that protein synthesis occurs in intact, isolated dendrites. This, together with a few other key observations, gave birth to the field of local translation. Her team discovered, using next generation sequencing, over 2500 mRNAs localized to the neuropil. In addition, Schuman and collaborators (Dave Tirrell, Caltech and Daniela Dieterich, Magdeburg) has made invaluable technical contributions, such as the development of non-canonical amino acid metabolic labelling, click chemistry, and mutation of cell-biological enzymes (the BONCAT and FUNCAT techniques), enabling the labelling, purification, identification and visualization of newly synthesized proteins in neurons and other cells.

Erin Schuman attended the University of Southern California (USC), where she received her B.A. in Psychology (1985). She continued her education to obtain a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Princeton University (1990). She conducted postdoctoral research from 1990–1993 in Daniel V. Madison’s lab in the Molecular and Cellular Physiology Department at Stanford University. From there, Schuman was recruited to join the faculty in the Division of Biology at the California Institute of Technology where she moved up the ranks from Assistant to Full Professor. During this time, she was also appointed investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In 2009, she was recruited as the Director of Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, at which she holds her current position.

Erin Margaret Schuman, born May 15, 1963 in California, USA, is a neurobiologist who studies neuronal synapses. She is currently a Director at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research.