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Who is Dale Benos?
Walking in the Footsteps of Mentors
Dale was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the first son (of three) to a railroad
worker and a beautician. His father did graduate from high school, but his
mother did not. His father's parents came from Greece and what is now The
Czech Republic. His mother was born in Italy and came to the US when she
was 7 years old.
Learning Leads to Science
The thing that Dale remembers most was that his parents and grandparents
kept talking to him about education. That's all he heard growing up:
study; get a good education so that you can live well. He took that to
heart.
Because Dale was very shy, he liked to stay home and read and study. Books
opened up a whole new world of adventure and discovery for him. He was
always fascinated by the things around him: all the colors and how things
worked. Dale remembers always asking questions. Whenever he looked at
something, he wondered, how did someone actually come up with the idea to
make it happen? It was just those simple observations and questions that
triggered his interest in science.
Finding Out How Science Works
Dale attended a Jesuit high school in Cleveland called St. Ignatius.
There, the emphasis was on academics. He took a “Latin/Science” course of
study, where he was first exposed to chemistry, physics, and biology. He
remembers biology being quite boring, but since Dale wanted to become a
doctor, he knew he should learn it. After high school graduation, he
attended Case Western Reserve University, also in Cleveland. It was there,
in his sophomore year, that Dale took an Animal Physiology and Anatomy
class as part of his biology/chemistry major.
The instructor, when talking about amoebas and how they handle moving
water in and out of their bodies, mentioned what Dale thought were the
coolest experiments he had ever heard of. Two investigators took a small
glass tube, heated it, and pulled on the end until it was a very small
tip. They took that small tip and stuck it into the contractile vacuole of
the single cell amoeba, drew out fluid, and actually analyzed it! This
combination of biology and chemistry amazed Dale. When he found out that
this experiment was done by the Chair of the Biology Department at Case
Western, he immediately ran to the office and made an appointment to meet
the person. When he met with the Chair, he learned that it was Dr. Bodil
Schmidt Nielsen, the soon to be first elected woman President of the APS.
It was a wondrous time in her laboratory.
Mentors Make the Difference
Dr. Schmidt-Nielsen left Case Western after a year to go work full time at
Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratories in Maine. She invited Dale
there to work with her for the summer after he graduated. It was Dr.
Schmidt-Nielsen who convinced him not to go to medical school. She told
him to go to Duke University and get a PhD in research with Dr. Daniel
Tosteson (another APS President). Dr. Tosteson could teach Dale everything
possible about how ions (like calcium, sodium, and potassium) are
transported in and out of the cell. Needless to say, physiology was in
Dale’s training at a very early stage.
Sometime while he was working on his PhD degree, Dale decided that he
wanted to end up working at a university that had a medical center, so
that he could do research and train students in a school that would
combine his interests of both science and medicine. He stayed at Duke
University after receiving his PhD in 1976 for an additional two years of
research (called a post-doctoral fellowship) with Dr. Lazaro Mandel,
another very well-known physiologist.
Out on His Own
Dr. Benos got his first faculty job in 1978 at Harvard Medical School in
Boston, MA, in the Physiology Department. After being there a few years,
Dr. Benos was invited to University of Alabama at Birmingham to give a
talk on his research. He never had even been to Alabama before, so he said
yes. The University asked him to come and work for them, but it took two
years of talking before Dr. Benos finally agreed to move down South. He
joined the Department of Physiology and Biophysics in 1985. Now, as they
say, he is probably there for life! In 1996, Dr. Benos became the Chair of
the Department.
Being a Mentor Himself
The fun part for Dr. Benos about being a Chair is that he gets to hire
bright young faculty and then gets to mentor those faculty, as well as the
students in the department, and help them with their own careers. He finds
that he gets as much satisfaction at seeing their successes as he does
with his own, if not more.
Dr. Benos does quite a bit of teaching as well. It is something he enjoys
very much.
Of course, there is the seemingly endless stream of duties that a Chair
has to do, but Dr. Benos has learned to pick and choose quite carefully
those things he does. He has a relatively large laboratory (about 15
members), all working on aspects of ion transport as it is related to
kidney, gastrointestinal, lung, and brain function. Their work now has
become more focused on genetic-type research that can be applied to such
diseases as cystic fibrosis, hypertension, HIV dementia, and brain tumors.
Serving APS
Dr. Benos has been very active with the research journals of the American
Physiological Society. He has published articles in all of the APS
journals except the Journal of Neurophysiology and Journal of Applied
Physiology. One of his future goals is to publish in those journals too.
He was the Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Physiology: Cell
Physiology from 1990-1996. From 1995-1997, he was also asked to serve as a
member of the APS Publications Committee, helping to oversee all 14 APS
journals and the book program. In 1999 to 2004, he was selected to be
Chair that very important Committee.
The Society’s membership elected Dr. Benos to serve on the APS Council
from 1997-2000, where he helped to run the entire Society. This year, in
2005, he was elected by the entire APS membership to serve as APS
President, just like his two former mentors had done.
Spending Time With Family
Outside of work, Dr. Benos spends most all of his time with his family. He
participates in all of his daughters' activities and supports his wife's
volunteer work with the community and elementary, middle, and high
schools. She, in fact, was named "Citizen of the Year (2003)' for her work
and was just named in summer 2005 to serve as a member of the Vestavia
Hills Board of Education (5-yr appointment). He used to play baseball/fast
pitch softball, and now he admits to being defeated by the game of golf.
He saves time to volunteer in his local community as a softball coach and
as a member of the Girls Softball Board.
Advice for High School Students
I think physiology is perhaps the most pure, the most basic, and the most
relevant of scientific disciplines. If any student, and any level of
education or career, has a passion for understanding the world around him
or her, physiology is the thing, because no matter what an individual's
predilection is (e.g., chemistry, physics, mathematics, life sciences)
physiology can accommodate.
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