Orr named Regents Professor

LMP professor Harry Orr has been named Regents Professor, the highest honor the University bestows on its faculty.  

The honor follows his being elected to the University of Minnesota Academic Health Sciences Academy of Excellence in 2006 and to the National Academy of Medicine in 2014, plus winning the 2022 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience. 

Orr joined LMP in 1981.  He is James Schindler and Bob Allison Ataxia Chair in Translational Research and Director of the Institute of Translational Neuroscience.

Orr’s initial work on the genetics of the immune system led to a collaboration with Baylor geneticist Huda Zoghbi on spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA1), a neurodegenerative disease affecting motor coordination and cognition. Orr continues to study SCA1 and is working to translate those discoveries into new therapies.  

See Orr's LMP "Legends in Pathology" video.