Jean Chen Shih

Jean Shih's career has been filled with firsts. In 2000, she became the first woman to be awarded the Volwiler Research Achievement Award by the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP). Shih has spent most of her career studying monoamine oxidase (MAO), a brain enzyme that affects mood, depression, addiction, blood pressure, the sleep-waking cycle and even Parkinson's disease.

In 2002, her research team became the first to model the enzyme's three-dimensional structure and to work out the key amino acids involved in its active sites. Their findings have aided efforts to design better antidepressants and to find treatments for Parkinson's.

Earlier in her career, Shih became the first to locate two genes on the X chromosome that control the production of two different forms of MAO, MAO-A and MAO-B. Through a series of experiments, she found that genetically engineered mice missing the MAO-A enzyme were unusually aggressive, while those missing both forms of the enzyme displayed both aggression and anxiety. "This tells us that anxiety and aggression are regulated by similar neurotransmitter pathways," says Shih.

Shih joined the USC School of Pharmacy in 1974 as an assistant professor of pharmacy/biochemistry. For her groundbreaking research, Shih also has received two MERIT awards from the National Institutes of Health.