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Who is Dale Benos? Walking in the Footsteps of Mentors
The thing that Dale remembers most was that his parents and grandparents emphasized education. That's all he heard growing up: study; get a good education so that you can live well. He took that to heart. Moreover, because Dale was extremely 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 and wondering, how did someone actually come up with the idea to make whatever it was happen that he was looking at right then. It was just those simple observations and questions that triggered his interest in science. Finding Out How Science WorksDale attended a Jesuit high school in Cleveland called St. Ignatius. There, the emphasis was on academics. He took a “Latin/Science” curriculum, where he was first exposed to chemistry, physics, and biology. He remembers biology being quite boring, but since Dale wanted to become a physician, 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 water balance in amoeba, mentioned what Dale thought were the coolest experiments he had ever heard of. Two investigators pulled a small glass tube to a 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 DifferenceDr. 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 before he started graduate school. It was Dr. Schmidt-Nielsen who convinced him not to go to medical school. She directed him to Duke University to do his graduate work with Dr. Daniel Tosteson (another APS President) so that Dale could learn everything possible about ion transport. Needless to say, physiology was in Dale’s training at a very early stage. Sometime during graduate school at Duke, Dale decided that he wanted to be in an academic medical center, so that he could do research and train students in an environment that would combine his interests of both science and medicine. He stayed at Duke University after receiving his PhD in 1976 for a two-year postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Lazaro Mandel, another very well-known physiologist. Out on His OwnDr. Benos got his first faculty job in 1978 at Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA, in the now defunct Physiology Department (Duke's Department of Physiology is also defunct—humm, nothing to do with Dr. Benos having been there, though!). After being promoted to Associate Professor in 1983, Dr. Benos was invited to University of Alabama at Birmingham for a seminar (he never had even been to Alabama before). After a two-year courtship, he 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 HimselfThe 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 students in the department, through 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 administrative duties, 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 related to kidney, gastrointestinal, lung, and brain function. Their work has become more translational, with applicability to such diseases as cystic fibrosis, hypertension, HIV‑dementia, and brain tumors. Serving APSDr. Benos has been very active with the American Physiological Society’s publications. 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 rectify that deficiency. He served as 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, he was selected as Chair that prestigious Committee, a position in which he served until 2004. 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 FamilyOutside 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 Undergraduate StudentsI 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. Be sure to always communicate
freely with your peers, mentors, and others in the laboratory or
department. In that way, not only do you build solid relationships, but
you gain a deeper appreciation and understanding of the joys and Fuller, C.M., and D.J. Benos. Ca2+-activated Cl- channels: a newly emerging anion transport family. News Physiol. Sci. 15:165-171, 2000.
Schwiebert, E.M., D.J. Benos, M.E. Egan, M. J. Stutts, and W.B. Guggino. CFTR is a conductance regulator as well as a chloride channel. Physiol. Rev. 79:S145-S166, 1999.
Benos, D.J., C.M. Fuller, V. Gh. Shlyonsky, B.K. Berdiev, and I.I. Ismailov. Amiloride-Sensitive Na+ Channels: Insights and Outlooks. News Physiol. Sci. 12:55-61, 1997.
Matalon, S., D.J. Benos, and R.J. Jackson. Biophysical and molecular properties of amiloride-inhibitable Na+ channels in alveolar epithelial cells. Am. J. Physiol.:Lung Cell. Physiol. 271:L1-L22, 1996.
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