Icha Niemeyer was born in Santiago and studied at Sciences Faculty, from Universidad de Chile, where she trained in Biological Sciences. After working at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire in Lausanne, Switzerland and the Physiology Laboratory in Cambridge, UK, she completed her PhD at Cambridge University. Her thesis on glutamatergical neurotransmission of the central nervous system of invertebrates was supervised by David Sattelle from the Zoology Department. Later, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Molecular Biology Laboratory of the Medical Research Council (MRC). Her subject of study was the serotonin receptor. In 1994, she returned to Chile, where she taught the Medicine students at Universidad de Santiago. In 1999, she moved to the Facultad de Medicina of Universidad de Chile, to research the role of the potassium channels on the regulation of cellular volume. In 2000, she joined the Centro de Estudios Cientificos, CECs, in Valdivia. Her current main interest is on the TASK potassium channels regulation.