Phyllis R. Robinson has been a member of the Department of Biological Sciences at UMBC since 1992. She is a Boston native who graduated with a BA in Biology from Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA a Ph. D from University of Wisconsin-Madison and she did her postdoctoral work at Brandeis University, Waltham, MA. Robinson’s research has focused on the problem of phototransduction. In particular, much of her research has concentrated on visual pigments, the molecules directly involved in light detection. Her pioneering work on the visual pigments of aquatic mammals has furthered our understanding of how mammals adapted to their marine environment. Her recent research on melanopsin, a recently described and novel visual pigment, is helping to elucidate melanopsin’s role in non-image forming light perception which is involved in the regulation several important physiological processes. New work from her laboratory has described the regulation and inactivation of light activated melanopsin.