Ann Stuart

I am a neurophysiologist and an amateur cellist. At present I am retired from the Department of Cell Biology and Physiology at UNC Chapel Hill where I led a research lab for many years, taught undergraduate, graduate, and medical students, and trained graduate students in the art of giving scientific presentations.

I first came to the MBL in 1965 on a pilgrimage immediately after graduating from college. Inspired by a college lecture given by H.K.Hartline, who had done his Nobel prize-winning research on horseshoe crab vision at the MBL, I decided I had to see Woods Hole for myself. I was smitten! So as a graduate student, and then as a young professor at Harvard, I figured out how to relocate my research to the MBL each summer.

Indeed I have come to the MBL every summer since 1973. In 1975 I met John Moore, a handsome, highly respected Duke neurophysiologist with a sailboat and a Woods Hole cottage. Soon we were married! I moved to UNC and we continued the annual migration to Woods Hole, filling a U-Haul truck with lab equipment and bringing our students and postdocs.

For much of my career I rented a lab in Whitman building, now Rowe, and later on taught in the summer courses. I especially loved "MBL Day" when I opened my lab to visitors and introduced them to activity recorded from invertebrate nerve cells in response to light. It was quite a show: sudden light in the darkened lab caused an impressive burst of neuronal activity which we picked up and sent to a loudspeaker. Later I occupied a small office in the MBL Library where my husband and I developed an interactive, simulation-based learning tool called Neurons in Action (published by Sinauer). We are thrilled that NIA is being used in many countries to enlighten students on the mysteries of neuronal signaling. Even the Dalai Lama's monks use it!

Summers are always busy with science, but outside the lab John and I took up windsurfing. In 1981 we actually sailed to the Vineyard and back on our clunky Classic windsurfers. A son was born in 1983 and soon all three of us were windsurfing. As my research wound down, I devoted more time to two other passions -- coaching students in their presentation skills, and my hobby, music. For years I performed with my son on our two arrays of musical glasses and now I play my cello in various chamber groups, happy to have more time for music during retirement.