Violeta Mutafova-Yambolieva MD, PhD is a Professor of Physiology and Cell Biology at the University of Nevada Reno, School of Medicine.
After receiving an MD degree from the Sofia Medical Academy, Dr. Mutafova-Yambolieva practiced medicine and received specialized training in internal medicine, cardiology, and pharmacology and therapeutics. She then received a PhD degree in Pharmacology and Physiology from the Sofia Medical Academy. She was appointed as a tenured Assistant Professor at the Institute of Physiology and Neurobiology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and studied mechanisms of plurichemical neurotransmission in the peripheral nervous system. In 1993 Dr. Mutafova-Yambolieva was awarded a Fellowship from the Fogarty International Center of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) U S A to continue her studies on purinergic signaling in Dr. David Westfall’s laboratory at the University of Nevada in Reno. This was followed by a fellowship in microelectrode methodologies in the laboratory of Dr. Kathleen Keef at the Department of Physiology and Cell Biology at University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine. Since 1997 she has developed independent, extramurally-funded research programs in the same department and is a Full Professor since 2008. Her lab focuses on understanding extracellular purinergic signaling in smooth muscle. Her work led to the discovery of a new set of enteric inhibitory purinergic neurotransmitters, new mechanisms of regulation of intestinal motility, and new extracellular purine mediators in vascular and visceral smooth muscles and brain synaptosomes. Her research has been continually funded by the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association.
