Greg Dussor: pharmacology scholar at the forefront of migraine research

Dr. Greg Dussor, an internationally recognized expert in migraine research, focuses on uncovering the mechanisms behind migraine pain and identifying potential therapeutic targets. As a core faculty member of the Center for Advanced Pain Studies (CAPS) and co-director of the Pain Neurobiology Research Group at UT Dallas, he works to alleviate the burden of chronic pain through basic research, therapeutic discovery, and education.

Leading the Dussor Lab at UT Dallas, he aims to develop novel therapeutics that could prevent or even reverse chronic pain states. Despite significant advancements, much remains unknown about the mechanisms contributing to migraines, a condition affecting nearly a third of the U.S. population. Migraine is the sixth most prevalent disease worldwide and the most common neurological disorder, yet less than half of those who suffer from it achieve adequate relief with current treatments. His research also investigates the biological mechanisms that may explain why migraine disproportionately affects women.

“Migraine is among the most common and most disabling disorders worldwide, but we have essentially no idea why it happens and what its causes are,” he said. “People can be otherwise entirely normal and yet they have migraine attacks caused by everyday life events like exposure to stress, changes in sleep patterns or weather, or fluctuations in hormone levels.  From a neuroscience perspective, this is a complete mystery and a major challenge to figure out.”

Dussor earned his PhD in pharmacology from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio in 2002. He did a postdoctoral fellowship at the Vollum Institute in Portland, Oregon.  He then joined the faculty at the University of Arizona in 2007, focusing on the pathophysiology of chronic headache disorders such as migraine. Since 2014, he has served as a faculty member at UT Dallas, where he now leads the Neuroscience Department in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. In this role, he oversees the department’s research, teaching, and service missions, managing its administrative and financial operations.

In addition to his research, Dussor is dedicated to teaching and mentoring students. He offers both undergraduate and graduate courses in neuroscience, specializing in neuropharmacology, the neuroscience of pain, and neurophysiology. His undergraduate courses include Neuropharmacology, which explores neurotransmitter functions and their effects on the central nervous system. At the graduate level, he leads a Seminar in Systems Neuroscience, which provides PhD students with training in oral presentation skills and exposure to current research, as well as The Neuroscience of Pain, a systems-oriented course covering neural processing and treatment methodologies.

In addition to his academic and clinical responsibilities, Dr. Dussor is actively involved in national advocacy and service within the headache medicine community. He serves on multiple committees within the American Headache Society, contributes to public education and outreach through his work with the nonprofit Association of Migraine Disorders, and advocates for improved headache care and research funding on Capitol Hill each year as part of the Alliance for Headache Disorders Advocacy.

Dussor is one of five BBS faculty members joining the newest cohort of UT Dallas endowed chairs and professors. He has been appointed as the James Bartlett Chair in Behavioral and Brain Sciences – a professorship named in honor of the late psychology professor and BBS administrator.

Bartlett served as a BBS faculty member for 44 years and as the school’s interim dean from 2015 to 2018. His research focused on how people receive and retain nonverbal information — from melodies to faces and places. He was among the first researchers to explore holistic memory processing — producing pioneering behavioral evidence that the brain processes faces as a unit, and not by their individual components.

In addition to his faculty responsibilities and research, Bartlett provided leadership to UT Dallas in a variety of important capacities throughout his tenure. His titles, both within and outside the University, included associate dean of the then-fledgling School of Human Development (now BBS), dean of graduate studies and research, chair of the UT System Faculty Advisory Council, and head of the UT Dallas cognition and neuroscience PhD program.

Endowed chairs and professorships are the highest academic award the University can bestow on a faculty member. The endowments, funded through philanthropic donations, fund initiatives that advance research and instructional programs. UT Dallas has more than 175 chairs and professorships, with several established by or honoring the University’s founders and early leaders.