Jean de Vellis, passed away on Sunday after a brief illness. Jean started his career at UCLA in 1965 as an Assistant Professor in Psychiatry and retired 50 years later, in 2015, as a Distinguished Professor. Notably, he directed the Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (IDDRC) at UCLA. As a joint faculty in Neurobiology, he was an active participant in the intellectual and educational life. His technical and scholarly contributions positively impacted our department and the broad neuroscience community. He was a pioneer in defining the molecular events influencing the plasticity and regenerative capacity of glia and neurons. Additionally, Jean was the long standing editor-in-chief of the Journal of Neuroscience Research. His research studied molecular mechanisms controlling neuronal and glial cells interaction during development. He will be deeply missed.
