Diane Barber

Barber has been a long-standing member of the Women in Cell Biology (WICB) committee within the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) and served as chair of the committee from 2016-2019. She was also co-chair and chair of Gordon Research Conferences on Molecular Pharmacology, and currently serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Max Planck Institute for Experimental Medicine as well as on editorial boards for several journals, including Molecular Biology of the Cell, the American Journal of Physiology – Cell Physiology, and BMC Biology. She has supervised more than 35 PhD students and postdoctoral fellows, and her mentoring and research excellence has been recognized by her receipt of the Annual Faculty Mentoring Award in 2013 from the UCSF Postdoctoral Scholars Association, of the Annual Faculty Research and Mentoring Award in 2020 from the UCSF John Greene Society of Dental Students, and the Annual Faculty Lecture in Translational Science from the UCSF Academic Senate. For the past several years, Barber has traveled to Yerevan, Armenia to co-teach a week-long cell biology course at the Institute of Molecular Biology.

In 2016, Barber was appointed as the chair of Women in Cell Biology (WICB) for the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB). Her term began on January 1, 2016. She succeeded the last chair, Sandra K. Masur.

In 2012, Barber was selected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

From 1995 to 2000, Barber was named an Established Investigator by the American Heart Association. From 1998 and continuing into the present day, Barber has been on the editorial board of the American Journal of Physiology. Cell Physiology. From 1998 to 1999, Barber served on the National Review Committee for Transport and Metabolism of the American Heart Association. In 1998, Barber was awarded the Innovation in Basic Sciences Award at the University of California, San Francisco. From 2000 to 2002, Barber was the co-chair of the National Review Committee for Transport and Metabolism for the American Heart Association. In 2001, Barber became the vice-chair of the Gordon Conference on Molecular Pharmacology, and in 2003, she became the chair. Barber was a member of the NIH CDF3 Study Section from 2001 to 2003. In 2005, Barber received the Sandler Program Integrative Award.

Barber was born and raised in Bakersfield, California. Her father, Leo Barber (Berberian), and mother, Helen Barber (nee Garabedian), were first-generation Armenian Americans whose families emigrated from the Anatolia region of Eastern Turkey; Karput and Diyarbakir, respectively. She earned a BS in Biological Sciences in 1975 and MS in Physiology in 1977 from the University of California, Davis, followed by a PhD in Anatomy under Andrew Soll and John Walsh in 1985 in the Centre for Ulcer Research and Education at the University of California, Los Angeles. Supported by a National Research Service Award fellowship from the NIH, she completed her postdoctoral work under Susan Leeman in the Department of Physiology at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester, MA. Her first faculty appointment was as an Assistant Professor at Yale University in the Department of Surgery, Section of Anatomy between 1987-1991. She joined the faculty in the Department of Stomatology and Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco in 1992. She is currently a Professor and former Chair of the Department of Cell and Tissue Biology at the University of California, San Francisco.

Diane L. Barber (born 1952) is an American cell biologist. She is an Endowed Professor and Chair of the Department of Cell and Tissue Biology at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and an elected American Association for the Advancement of Science fellow in recognition of her "distinguished contributions on cell signaling by plasma membrane ion transport proteins and on the design and function of proteins regulated by intracellular pH dynamics." In addition to teaching graduate and professional students and her administrative service, she directs a research laboratory funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF).