Center to Advance Chronic Pain Research

Our dear colleague, mentor, and friend Joel Daniel Greenspan passed away on the morning of February 8, 2021 in the comfort of his home with his wife of over 40 years by his side.

Joel grew up in Florida where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in Behavioral Sciences at Rollins College in 1974. Joel then obtained his PhD in Neuroscience at Florida State University in 1980 under the mentorship of Dan Kenshalo, Sr. With Kenshalo his dissertation was “The Effects of Skin Compressibility Upon Psychophysical Functions of Tactile Intensity: A Comparison of Force and Depth of Skin Indentation as Stimulus Dimensions”. During this time, Joel would work at Disney World to fund his education when the lab did not have funding for his stipend. After receiving his PhD, Joel worked in a research fellowship under the mentorship of Ed Perl at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, where he continued his work with non-human primates to study the psychophysics associated with electrophysiological activity in cutaneous primary afferent nociceptors. From 1987 to 1995, Joel was an assistant professor at SUNY Health Sciences Center at Syracuse, where he contributed fundamental work towards our understanding of the neural encoding of nociceptive mechanical stimuli and the perception of sharpness and pain.

He moved his lab to the University of Maryland, Baltimore in 1996, recruited by Ron Dubner, where he continued researching the neural mechanisms underlying the perception of pain. At UMB, Joel added functional neuroimaging of nociceptive processing in the human central nervous system to his portfolio. He also maintained a faculty affiliation with the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and was a member of the Johns Hopkins Center for Mind-Body Research. Joel worked with friend and colleague Rich Traub and other distinguished researchers to lead the IASP “Consensus Conference to Establish Guidelines for Research on Sex Differences in Pain” in 2006, which led to a highly impactful publication that continues to guide the field. Joel provided his expertise in psychophysics to the Orofacial Pain Prospective Evaluation and Risk Assessment Study from 2006 until 2016 and managed the study site at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Joel was the co-founder and co-director of the University of Maryland Center to Advance Chronic Pain Research with Susan Dorsey from 2014 until 2020. Joel was chair of the department of Neural and Pain Sciences from 2008 until 2020. He was primary mentor for PhD recipients Eleni Sarlani, Eric Moulton, Raimi Quiton, and Timothy Meeker and postdoctoral fellows David Andrew, Elizabeth Roy Felix, D. S. ‘Judy’ Veldhuijzen, Anne-Christine Schmid and Yiming Liu. He contributed to the publication of more than 125 research articles and numerous book chapters. These book chapters included Gender Differences in Pain and Its Relief in Melzack and Wall’s Textbook of Pain authored with Rich Traub.

Joel was a cerebral and inquisitive scientist, a patient and supportive mentor, and a kind and gentle soul to all who knew him. He is survived by his wife Deborah Greenspan, his son, Robert Crews, Sr., his daughter-in-law Lillian Crews, and three grandchildren Roberts Crews, Jr., Candice Crews, and Alex Crews.