Tamara N. Alliston, Ph.D. ’98, is a professor in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery University of California San Francisco, where she directs the UCSF Musculoskeletal Center. With a focus on TGFβ signaling, her laboratory investigates the interaction between physical and biochemical signals in the control of skeletal cell differentiation and the role of these pathways in skeletal development and disease. Supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), and Department of Defense (DOD), her group employs approaches from molecular and cell biology, materials science, and engineering to identify mechanisms of skeletal disease to advance the development of new therapeutic strategies. She is the director of the NIH-P30-supported UCSF Core Center for Musculoskeletal Biology and Medicine and is a member of the editorial boards for both Bone and the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research. She recently served as a standing member of the NIH Skeletal Biology Structure and Regeneration (SBSR) study section and as the Translational Co-Chair for the 2020 American Society for Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR) Annual Meeting.
Through her service on the Orthopaedic Research Society (ORS) Board of Directors as the inaugural Professional Development Council Chair, she led programming for new investigators, industry-based researchers, women and individuals underrepresented in science. She has mentored over 25 graduate and post-graduate scholars, many of whom now hold faculty and leadership roles in academia and industry. She has successfully organized a number of research conferences, such as the AAOS/ORS Workshop on Joint Crosstalk and the 2022 Gordon Research Conference on Musculoskeletal Biology and Bioengineering. She serves as an elected Councilor for the ASBMR.
Dr. Alliston’s honors include election as a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the Hulda Irene Duggan Arthritis Investigator Award, the ASBMR Harold M. Frost Young Investigator Award, the AIMM-ASBMR John Haddad Young Investigator Award, the ORS Women’s Leadership Award, the ORS Outstanding Achievement in Mentoring Award, and the ASBMR Adele Boskey Esteemed Award, which recognizes outstanding and major scientific contributions, leadership, and mentorship in mechanisms of mineralization, bone quality, and mechanobiology.
