About the PI:

The Westman Islands. The south cost of Iceland with Eyjafjallajökull glacier is visible in the background. Photo by Mats Wibe Lund, used with permission. Volcanic eruption in the Westman Islands in 1973. Everyone, including Bogi, survived, but there was extensive property damage. Photo by Mats Wibe Lund, used with permission.

I am from the Westman Islands, a small fishing village just off the south coast of Iceland. My hometown is probably best known for a volcanic eruption in January of 1973, which forced the temporary evacuation of the whole population (approx. 5000). After completing gymnasium education at the Menntaskólinn við Hamrahlíð in Reykjavík (1975), I attended Medical School at the University of Iceland in Reykjavík and graduated in 1981. Following a 2-year stint working as a doctor in Iceland, I came to Cleveland, Ohio for residency training in Internal Medicine at the Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital, a Case Western Reserve University-affiliated program. From there I moved to the Department of Pharmacology at Case Western Reserve University where I received my initial research training in the laboratory of John H. Nilson, working on regulation of gene expression (1986-1990). Subsequently, I moved to the University of California, San Diego for clinical fellowship training in Endocrinology and Metabolism (1990-1993), and further research training in the laboratory of Geof Rosenfeld at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, working on POU domain transcription factors. In 1996, I became an Assistant Professor of Medicine at UC San Diego, and since 2001 I have been an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Biological Chemistry at UC Irvine. While I do have some clinical and teaching responsibilities within the Division of Endocrinology, my main focus, and 80-90% of my time, is devoted towards the laboratory research program.

About the laboratory:

Celebrating the opening of Sprague Hall in the spring of 2002. From left, Steve Lipkin, Bogi, Paul Wakenight, Mike Demetriou and Paul Vrana. The mysterious man in the back (with a moustache) is Murray Korc, chief of the Division of Endocrinology. Photo by Driscoll photo labs. Used with permission.

Having completed my fellowship training in Endocrinology and Metabolism, and postdoctoral research training, at the University of California, San Diego, I started my laboratory within the Department of Medicine at UC San Diego in 1996. In 2001, we moved the laboratory 70 miles up I-5 to UC Irvine -- a move that allowed us to expand and strengthen the research program. In the fall of 2002, our laboratory moved to Sprague Hall, a new state-of-the-art research facility on the UCI campus, housing investigators with primary research interests in the fields of genetics and cancer. From the beginning, research in our laboratory has focused on transcriptional regulation in epidermis and keratinocyte differentiation, but more recently we have expanded our work to address questions related to the biology of the mammary gland and breast cancer.

The laboratory belongs to the Departments of Medicine and Biological Chemistry within the School of Medicine. We are also members of the UCI Comprehensive Cancer Center as well as the Molecular Biology, Genetics and Biochemistry graduate training program, which is a joint program with the School of Biological Sciences.