Karl A. Deisseroth, M.D., Ph.D.
Scientific Council Member (Joined 2008)
2013 Goldman-Rakic Prizewinner for Outstanding Achievement in Cognitive Neuroscience
2007, 2005 Young Investigator Grant
Karl A. Deisseroth, M.D., Ph.D.
D.H. Chen Professor of Bioengineering and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator
Stanford University
Dr. Deisseroth coined the term “optogenetics” to name the breakthrough technology he developed that uses light to control millisecond-precision activity patterns in genetically-defined cell types within the brains of freely moving animals. His laboratory and thousands of others around the globe are now applying this technology to probe the dynamics of neural circuits in both healthy and diseased brains.
Dr. Deisseroth received his bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude, from Harvard in 1992, his Ph.D. from Stanford in 1998, and his M.D. from Stanford in 2000. He completed postdoctoral training, medical internship and adult psychiatry residency at Stanford, and he was board-certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in 2006. While continuing as a practicing psychiatrist specializing in mood disorders and autism-spectrum disease, Dr. Deisseroth teaches and serves as the chair of undergraduate education in bioengineering at the Stanford University School of Engineering.
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The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation is a global nonprofit organization focused on improving the understanding, prevention and treatment of psychiatric and mental illnesses.
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Beginning in 1987, the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation was providing seed money to neuroscientists to invest in “out of the box” research that the government and other sources were unwilling to fund. Today, Brain & Behavior Research Foundation is still the leading, private philanthropy in the world in this space.
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