Dr. Willing was educated at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. She received her Bachelor of Arts (Honors) in Psychology in 1988, her Master of Science in Physiological Psychology in 1990, and her Doctor of Philosophy in Medical Physiology in 1993. During these years in Calgary, she investigated the hormonal regulation of feeding in diabetic rats. After completing her Ph.D., she went on to a post-doctoral fellowship in Behavioral Neuroscience at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center (Louisiana State University) in which she functionally traced the neural signals generated by a meal from the gastrointestinal tract to the brainstem. Since joining the faculty at USF, she has focused her research on developing novel cell therapies for the treatment of stroke, Parkinson's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease). Her current research, funded by the Florida Biomedical Research Program and American Heart Association, using human umbilical cord blood cells to treat stroke in the rat have provided promising results toward this goal.
                                                                                                >>top

Vendrame M, Cassidy J, Newcomb J, Butler T, Pennypacker KR, Zygoma T, Davis Sanberg PR, Willing AE. Towards a therapeutic dose of human umbilical cord blood cells for focal brain ischemia. Stroke, 35: 2390-2395, 2004.

Walczak, P., Chen, N., Hudson, J. E., Willing, A.E., Garbuzova-Davis, S.N, Song, S, Sanberg, P. Sanchez-Ramos, J., Bickford, P. C., & Zigova, T. Do hematopoietic cells mimic properties of endogenous neural precursors when exposed to a neutralizing environment in young and aged rats? J. Neuroscience Research, 76: 244-254, 2004

Willing AE, Zigova T, Milliken M, Poulos S, Saporta S, McGrogan MP, Snable G, Sanberg PR. Lithium Exposure Enhances Survival of NT2N cells (hNT Neurons) in the Hemiparkinsonian Rat. Eur. J. Neurosci., 16: 2271-2278, 2002.                                                                                                                                             >>top