Professor of neuroscience Karen O’Malley, PhD, has been named a 2025 Honorary Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). This incredible honor recognizes O’Malley’s overall contributions to the scientific community and the impact of her research on science as a whole.
“I was surprised and honored when I learned that I had been selected to be an AAAS fellow,” said O’Malley. “There is a sense of validation as well as gratitude to all of the lab members that worked so hard to achieve unassailable results.”
O’Malley’s research focuses on the cellular and molecular basis of neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders — specifically, on dopamine receptors and signal transduction pathways mediated by glutamate receptors found throughout the central nervous system.
Her group was one of the first to isolate D2-like genes and examine their unique signaling functions, which have been found to play key roles in dopamine release regulation, cognition, reward, and mood regulation. These genes also serve as primary targets for many antipsychotic medications.
Recently, O’Malley’s team has explored associations of this family of genes with autism spectrum disorders, schizophrenia, and attention deficit hyperactive disorder. Her work on G protein-coupled receptors, or GPCRs, has uncovered that not only do these receptors inhabit the surface of neuronal membranes, where they modulate neuronal excitability during brain development as well as learning and memory, but also on the surface of nuclear membranes.
This novel finding has led them to investigate the role of these receptors in intracellular signaling, where they’ve seen effects on synaptic plasticity but also nerve pain, which suggests that different types of drugs may be more helpful than others for managing patients’ pain levels.
“This is a wonderful time in my career wherein I am trying to finalize some projects but at the same time I am very excited to take on new challenges such as applying new genomic approaches in the hopes of discovering novel signaling pathways associated with intracellular GPCRs,” O’Malley said.
AAAS Fellows are recognized for their outstanding contributions across research, teaching, administration, and effective communication and interpretation of science to the public. O’Malley was among a class of 449 scientists, engineers, and innovators across many disciplines who were part of the 2025 cohort of fellows, which was announced in March 2026.
“Science magazine, published by AAAS, is what I reach for first to read about changes in scientific policy, overviews of exciting discoveries or new instrumentation or techniques,” O’Malley said. “Thus there is no aspect of my career in which AAAS/Science hasn’t played an important role in shaping who I am as a scientist, sharpening my ability to frame a hypothesis and preparing me as a mentor for my own trainees and their future success.”
Author: Serina DeSalvio, freelance writer supporting the Department of Neuroscience.