Employment History:
Research Associate, Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, Emory University School of Medicine (1986)

Published Works:
Professor Veenstra has published more than 12 book chapters and 39 peer-reviewed scientific articles.

Public Speaking Experience:
Professor Veenstra has participated and has delivered public speeches at the National Scientific Conferences and Biannual International Gap Junction Conference.

Why He is an Expert:
Dr. Veenstra performs cutting-edge research into the physiology of cardiac gap junctions and how we might modulate them to help prevent heart attacks. He is still an active, NIH [National Institutes of Health]-funded investigator. "I made the first recording of the unitary current flow between heart cells – that was a pioneering observation," he points out.

Best Advice:
"It takes a natural curiosity to understand natural processes and one thing to figure out how things work, which nature has designed - take the heart, and how electrical impulses travel through the cells every second of our lives. You have to have self-motivation, intellectual curiosity and the perseverance to continue pursuing the work, even when the times have become more difficult."

Passionate about:
"My research really is the main motivating force in my life; this is why I made the career choice that I did. It’s something that I work on mostly all of the time to keep it going."

Biography Excerpt:
Richard D. Veenstra is a professor at the SUNY Upstate Medical University Department of Pharmacology. He, alongside Dr. Robert L. DeHaan, first discovered gap junction channel recordings from heart cells in the mid-1980s, a breakthrough that led to greater understanding about the functionality of the heart. Soon thereafter, Dr. Veenstra teamed up with Dr. Eric C. Beyer - who cloned the first cardiac gap junction protein, connexin43 - to begin examining the properties of cardiac gap junctions formed by distinct connexins. This effort was also facilitated by collaboration with Dr. Peter R. Brink to begin examining the biophysical properties of connexin-specific gap junction channels in the mid-1990s. Afterwards, Dr. Veenstra was able to pursue a full-time career in cardiovascular electrophysiology research and instruction. Dr. Veenstra, along with course co-director Dr. Jeffrey Freedman, founded an ion channels course as well as advanced graduate pharmacology, physiology, neuroscience, and cell and molecular biology courses – all at SUNY Upstate Medical University. Presently, he conducts research into cardiovascular electrophysiology, ion channels and gap junctions for the National Institutes of Health.

     

Cambridge Who's Who: What prompted you to enter this field?  
PROF. RICHARD D VEENSTRA :  It evolved over a series of steps. I was always interested in the natural sciences, biology and math in public school. I took advanced placement biology in high school. I liked physiology and went into that. I really learned my existing trade in graduate school, with the electrophysiology of the heart. From that, I became interested in how electric current flows between two heart cells. That’s what I pursued in my post-doctoral research. I was successful and that was what resulted in that Science [magazine] publication. I’m continuing that research to today. It looks like we’re getting to the point of having some pharmacology so we can open and close these channels.

What is the most significant issue facing your profession today?
Right now, finding funding for research in this country. It’s been cut back over the past five years. Many people who were actively involved in research now cannot afford to be. Most of us who still are must continuously write grants without any break. That’s what we have to do in order to keep the money coming in to do our research. It’s more difficult to keep research going, more time consuming, and really, less productive, because we spend more time writing grants than we’ve had to in the past. Therefore, we spend less time working on our projects and new ideas and more on writing up our results and publishing them. [For instance], because of the limited funds here, I have students coming into my laboratory and trying out research for two to three months. If the money doesn’t come through from a grant application, then I can’t bring the student into my laboratory; they go somewhere else and the work doesn’t continue.

Is that leading to a shortage of professionals such as yourself?
Yes, it is. There have been articles in Science and Nature and from scientific societies stating exactly that. We’re going to lose an entire generation of scientists if this continues. We’re already starting to lose people. A lot of us rely on students and research fellows from Southeast Asia – Korea, Japan, China and the like – to help us do our work, because American young adults are not going into science. It’s too difficult of a career choice. They [Southeast Asian countries] are developing countries, so in many ways, it’s a new and better opportunity for them.