Donna L. Hammond, Ph.D. joined the department as Professor of Anesthesia and Pharmacology in 2000. Dr. Hammond received her B.S. in Biochemical Pharmacology from the State University of New York at Buffalo and her Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the University of Illinois in Chicago. After a 2-year postdoctoral fellowship with Tony L. Yaksh, Ph.D., at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, she joined the G.D. Searle Company, where she led research efforts in the development of novel analgesics. Seven years later, she heard the siren call of academics once again, and joined the Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care at the University of Chicago. In 2000, she was lured to Iowa by the appeal of joining a grown team of investigators interested in pain research, the collegiality and quality of science at this institution, and the small town university environment.
Dr. Hammond is internationally recognized for her research into brainstem and spinal cord mechanisms of acute and chronic pain. She is the recipient of the Young Investigator’s Award from the American Pain Society and the J.J. Bonica Award from the American Society of Regional Anesthesia. She has served on numerous editorial boards for preeminent journals in the field including Pain and Journal of Pain and Neuroscience, and has served as the Chair and regular member of two different National Institutes of Health (NIH) study sections. Dr. Hammond has authored over 70 publications and 10 book chapters, and has been funded by the NIH nearly continuously since 1990 for her research.
In addition to her research, Dr. Hammond has an equally strong interest in mentoring undergraduate students, graduate students, medical students, and residents to successful careers in academic research. She is particularly proud of the four M.D., Ph.D. students she has trained, three of whom have elected to complete their training in anesthesiology in top ranked programs at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD), Washington University (St. Louis, MO) and University of Alabama (Birmingham, AL). Thus, while she is not an anesthesiologist, she sees herself playing an important role in maintaining the vigor of the discipline by participating in training the next generation of academic anesthesiologists.
Dr. Hammond is Co-Director of the University of Iowa Pain Research Program with Timothy J. Brennan, M.D., Ph.D., Professor in the Department of Anesthesia. This program is funded by a T32 training grant from the NIH, making our department one of only ten in the nation with a training grant. The program emphasizes interdisciplinary training of students, fellows, and junior faculty in pain research. Through a strong didactic program of individualized courses, journal clubs, work-in-progress presentations, and mentored bench research, this program serves as a springboard for these individuals to develop their own independent research program.
Currently, Dr. Hammond is serving as Interim Head of the Department of Pharmacology at UIHC, where she has a secondary appointment. She refers to this experience as her “administrative sabbatical!” When not balancing the demands of research, grant writing, and administration, she can be found getting “air-time” while jumping her horse, Divine Diva.