Dr. Edgar Garcia-Rill is a Professor of Neurobiology and Developmental Sciences, and Psychiatry in the College of Medicine at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS).  He also holds graduate faculty appointments in the Neurobiology and Developmental Sciences and Interdisciplinary Biomedical Sciences program.  He is the Director of the Center for Translational Neuroscience, a Center of Biomedical Research Excellence. 

He was born in Venezuela, and raised in Canada, where he earned his Ph.D. from McGill University in Montreal in 1973.  After postdoctoral training at the Department of Anatomy at the UCLA and the Neuropsychiatric Institute, he joined the faculty at UAMS in 1978.  Dr. Garcia-Rill has been continuously funded for his research for over 25 years. 

His research interests include the control of voluntary movement and locomotion, which involves the study of spinal cord injury as well as motor disorders like Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases.  He also does research on the control of arousal and sleep-wake cycles, recently describing a novel mechanism for sleep-wake control based on electrical coupling.  He is also interested in disorders which manifest sleep dysregulation like schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, and depression. 

Dr. Garcia-Rill has served on NIH review panels for 20 years, including NIDA council.  He also served on the Executive Office of the President's, Office of Science and Technology Policy Forum on Science in the National Interest in 1994.  He is Vice President of the Morris Foundation, a philanthropic organization based in Hot Springs, AR.  He has published over 140 peer reviewed manuscripts and number law reviews and book chapters. 

Dr. Garcia-Rill is actively engaged in recruiting graduate students and routinely opens his lab to summer undergraduates where he has mentored over 20 students in research.  He has taught in dozens of Graduate courses in Neurobiology and has served as major advisor or committee member to 14 PhD students.