Melina Hale

She studies zebrafish and other organisms to understand the role of mechanosensation in limb movement and how circuits in the brain and spinal cord control and coordinate movement more generally, in addition to their evolution.

Education and career

Hale received her B.S. in Zoology from Duke University in 1992 and her Ph.D. in Organismal Biology from the University of Chicago in 1998. She is a professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy and Neurobiology and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Chicago. She was a Postdoctoral Fellow (1998-2001) at SUNY Stony Brook in the Department of Neurobiology and a Grass Fellow (2000) at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA.

Hale has been a faculty member at the University of Chicago since 2002 and is currently the William Rainey Harper Professor in the Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy. She has served in various administrative roles including as Dean for Faculty Affairs in the Biological Sciences Division (2013-2016) and Vice Provost (2016-). She also served as Co-Interim Director at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA from 2017-2018.

As of April 12th, 2023, Hale has been appointed as the new dean of the University of Chicago College, effective July 1st 2023. She succeeds John W Boyer, the Martin A. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of History, who had previously held the post for more than 30 years.

She serves as President (2021-2023) for the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) and has previously served as chair in the Division of Comparative Biomechanics and in other roles. She was the keynote speaker at the Southeast regional meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB).