Michael Caterina, M.D., Ph.D., has been named director of the Department of Biological Chemistry for the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. 

Caterina, professor of biological chemistry and neuroscience and the inaugural Solomon H. Snyder Professor of Neurosurgery, has been a faculty member at Johns Hopkins for two decades. Caterina served as interim director of the Department of Biological Chemistry for a year after former director Gerald Hart, Ph.D., retired from the Johns Hopkins faculty. 

In addition, he is the inaugural director of the Johns Hopkins Neurosurgery Pain Research Institute, which studies pain in a wide range of illnesses such as cerebral palsy, trigeminal neuralgia and rheumatoid arthritis. 

Caterina, a sensory neurobiologist, studies how the nervous system responds to painful stimuli in health and disease. He is known for his discovery of a channel in cells, called the capsaicin receptor TRPV1, which ferries electrically charged molecules in response to heat signals. He showed that the channel is essential for nerve cells to detect painfully hot temperatures and pain caused by tissue inflammation. 

Caterina completed his medical degree and doctorate in biochemistry, cellular and molecular biology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1995. He is a member of the Society of Neuroscience. 

Caterina has authored 54 scientific papers and 31 reviews and book chapters. He has received the Professor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Donlin M. Long Pain Service Award from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He also received the Patrick D. Wall Young Investigator Award from the International Association for the Study of Pain and the John J. Bonica Award from the Eastern Pain Association.