Neural Circuit Development and Function in the Healthy and Diseased Brain: Comprehensive Developmental Neuroscience

Dr. Rubenstein is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. He also serves as a Nina Ireland Distinguished Professor in Child Psychiatry at the Nina Ireland Laboratory of Developmental Neurobiology. His research focuses on the regulatory genes that orchestrate development of the forebrain. Dr. Rubenstein's lab has demonstrated the role of specific genes in regulating neuronal specification, differentiation, migration and axon growth during embryonic development and on through adult life. His work may help to explain some of the mechanisms underlying human neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism.

Dr. Rakic is currently at the Yale School of Medicine, Department of Neuroscience, where his main research interest is in the development and evolution of the human brain. After obtaining his MD from the University of Belgrade School of Medicine, his research career began in 1962 with a Fulbright Fellowship at Harvard University after which he obtained his graduate degrees in Developmental Biology and Genetics. He held a faculty position at Harvard Medical School for 8 years prior to moving to Yale University, where he founded and served as Chair of the Department of Neurobiology for 37 years, and also founder and director of the Kavli Institute for Neuroscience. In 2015, he returned to work full-time on his research projects, funded by US Public Health Services and various private foundations.He is well known for his studies of the development and evolution of the brain, in particular his discovery of basic cellular and molecular mechanisms of proliferation and migration of neurons in the cerebral cortex. He was president of the Society for Neuroscience and popularized this field with numerous lectures given in over 35 counties. In 2008, Rakic shared the inaugural Kavli Prize in Neuroscience with Thomas Jessell and Stan Grillner. He is currently the Dorys McConell Duberg Professor of Neuroscience and serves on Advisory Boards and Scientific Councils of a number of Institutions and Research Foundations.