Established in 1947 to celebrate neuroanatomy and now promotes all of neuroscience.
Officers and Board of Directors
“As long as our brain is a mystery, the universe, the reflection of the structure of the brain will also be a mystery.”
- Santiago Ramón y Cajal
President (Nucleolus)
Paola Arlotta
The Arlotta lab seeks to define the molecular rules that shape and retain neuronal diversity in the cerebral cortex, and to model complex human cortical pathology, focusing on the development of new high-throughput in vitro models of human cortical development and neurodevelopmental disease using 3D cerebral organoids. Chair, Harvard Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology Golub Family Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology.
Harvard University
Email: paola_arlotta@harvard.edu
President Elect (Nissl Body)
Nenad Šestan
Nenad Šestan, a Croatian neurobiologist, was born in Zadar, Croatia. He completed his medical studies at the University of Zagreb's School of Medicine in 1995 and earned his doctorate in neurobiology from Yale University in 1999. Today, he serves as the Harvey and Kate Cushing Professor of Neuroscience and is also affiliated with the Kavli Institute for Neuroscience at Yale School of Medicine.
Yale University
Email: nenad.sestan@yale.edu
Past President (Lipofuscin Granule)
Leah Krubitzer
Leah Krubitzer is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Davis. Her graduate work focused on the evolution of visual cortex in primates, and she extended her research in Australia to include monotremes and marsupials. She has worked on the brains of over 45 different mammals. Her current research focuses on the impact of early experience and how culture impacts brain development. She also examines the evolution of sensory motor networks involved in manual dexterity, reaching and grasping in mammals. She received a MacArthur award for her work on evolution.
UCDavis | Email: lakrubitzer@gmail.com
Board Member
Sonia Garel
Sonia Garel is a neurobiologist. She currently heads a team at the Institut of Biology of the Ecole Normale Superieure (IBENS) in Paris and is a Professor at the College de France. The general goal of the Garel Lab is to understand how functional forebrain circuits, which enable sensory perception, motor responses and cognition, wired up during development.
Institut de Biologie de l'École Normale Supérieure
College de France
Email: garel@biologie.ens.fr
Board Member
Corey Harwell
Corey C. Harwell is an American neuroscientist who is an Associate Professor in Residence of Neurology at the University of California, San Fransico. The Harwell lab is interested in understanding how the extensive morphological, molecular and functional diversity of neural cell types is achieved during development of the central nervous system. We focus our studies on the forebrain, with particular attention to the cortex and the septal nucleus of the basal forebrain. Our long-term goal is to understand how genetic and epigenetic programs associated with a progenitor cells spatial and temporal identity dictates their fate choice. We are also interested in understanding how these diverse groups of neurons and glia coordinate to assemble the precise circuitry of the mammalian forebrain.
University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine
Email. corey.harwell@ucsf.edu
Board Member, Secretary (Apical Dendrite)
Patrick Hof
Dr. Hof graduated from the School of Medicine of the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and is the Regenstreif Research Professor of Neuroscience of the Nash Family Department of Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Hof has established an international reputation in quantitative approaches to systems neuroscience and brain evolution. His laboratory has extensive expertise in the pathology of neuropsychiatric disorders and uses quantitative, high-resolution, multi-scale microscopy methods to analyze the cellular and molecular events that make the human brain uniquely vulnerable and to identify targets for interventions at the level of specific neuronal populations.
Department of Neuroscience, Friedman Brain Institute Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Email: patrick.hof@mssm.edu
Board Member and Website Designer (Golgi Apparatus)
Dawn Hunter
Dawn received her MFA from the University of California, Davis. She has received many awards and grants for her artwork, markedly a Starr Foundation Fellowship to the Royal Academy of Art, London and a Fulbright España Senior Research Fellowship to the Instituto Cajal, Madrid. She is currently an Associate Professor of Art at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC.
School of Visual Art and Deign,
University of South Carolina
Email: dmhunter@email.sc.edu
Board Member
Brett Larson
Brett Larson received a B.S. in Finance with an emphasis in Accounting from the University of Iowa, and holds the CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ certification*. Brett’s licenses include the FINRA Series 6, 7, 63 and 65.
Manager of the Foundations Endowment
Romano Wealth Management
Email: larsonbrett8@gmail.com
Board Member
Liqun Luo
Dr. Luo received his PhD from Brandeis University and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. His lab studies how neural circuits are assembled during development and how their architectures enable specific functions in adults. They also develop genetic tools to help answer these questions with increasing precision.
Ann and Bill Swindells Professor,
Stanford University Investigator,
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Email: lluo@stanford.edu
Board Member
Carol Mason
Carol Mason is Professor of Pathology & Cell Biology, Neuroscience, and Ophthalmology and a member of the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute (ZMBBI), at Columbia University. She investigates the development of the pathway from eye to brain, in mice. She is Chair of Interschool Planning at ZMBBI, fostering cross-campus faculty recruitment, mentoring, and scientific interchange. Carol is a member of the National Academies of Medicine and Science, was President of the Society for Neuroscience 2013-2014, and is a current Simons Foundation Fellow.
Columbia University
Email: Cam4@columbia.edu
Board Member
Pasko Rakic
Pasko Rakic, MD, PhD, is Yugoslav-born American neuroscientist who works at Yale University. Rakic’s research interests are in developmental neurobiology, particularly cellular and molecular mechanisms of neuronal proliferation, migration and synaptogenesis during development of the cerebral and cerebellar cortex.
Pasko Rakic, M.D., Ph.D.
Duberg Professor of Neurobiology and Neurology
Yale University School of Medicine
New Haven, CT 06520-8001
Email: pasko.rakic@yale.edu
Board Member, Neurofibrillary Tangle
Charles E. Ribak
Dr. Ribak is currently Professor Emeritus from the Department of Anatomy & Neurobiology at UC Irvine where he conducted neuroanatomical research and taught for over 33 years. His research was awarded with a Klingenstein Fellowship, the Michael Prize for Epilepsy Research, a Jacob Javits NIH Award and was elected a Fellow in the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science). He served as President of the Cajal Club from 2000-2002 and also served as the Secretary/Treasurer from 2006-2024. During his years of service, he was often called the glue that kept the Club together.
University of California, Irvine
Email: ribak@uci.edu
Board Member
Linda Richards
Research in the Richards Laboratory focuses on the development, plasticity, and function of long-range connections in the cerebral cortex, with particular emphasis on the corpus callosum and its role in brain circuits. The lab investigates the cellular and molecular mechanisms that guide cortical connectivity during development and how alterations in these processes contribute to congenital corpus callosum dysgenesis (CCD), including impacts on cognition and behaviour.
In addition to her research, Professor Richards is a passionate advocate for neuroscience. She contributed to establishing the International Brain Initiative, the Australian Brain Alliance and the Australian Brain Bee Challenge.
Photographer (Cone Outer Segment)
John Rubenstein
John Rubenstein has been at UCSF since 1991 where he has worked on the genetic control of cortex and basal ganglia development.
John L.R. Rubenstein, M.D., Ph.D.
Nina Ireland Distinguished Professor in Child Psychiatry
Nina Ireland Laboratory of Developmental Neurobiology
Department of Psychiatry UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences
Email: john.rubenstein@ucsf.edu
Board Member, Treasurer (Mitochondrion)
Lee A. Shapiro
Dr. Shapiro received his PhD in neuroscience from the State University of New York, Stony Brook. The Shapiro Lab at Texas A&M University is pursuing research studies involving epilepsy, trauma and other neurodegenerative disorders.
Texas A&M University
Email: lshapiro@tamu.edu
Board Member
Debby Silver
Debby Silver is a Duke School of Medicine Distinguished Professor of Neuroscience. Her lab investigates cell biological and genetic
mechanisms governing cerebral cortex development and contributing to neurodevelopmental pathologies and cortical evolution. They use imaging, genomics, organoids, and mouse models to understand post-transcriptional control of neurogenesis, as well as human-specific features of brain development.
Duke University School of Medicine
Email: debra.silver@duke.edu
Archivist/Historian (Alpha Helix)
Larry Swanson
Larry got his PhD in Neurobiology from the Washington University School of Medicine and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is a former Pesident of the Cajal Club and Society for Neuroscience, and Secretary General of the International Brain Research Organization.
University of Southern California, Department of Biological Sciences
Email: lswanson@usc.edu
Board Member
Hongkui Zeng
Hongkui Zeng is Executive Vice President and Director of Allen Institute for Brain Science. Her research interests are in understanding cell type diversity and connectivity in the mouse brain-wide circuits and how cell types contribute to circuit function, using large-scale, big and open science approaches.
Allen Institute for Brain Science
Email: HongkuiZ@alleninstitute.org