Functional conceptual knowledge maps of the human brain. Image by Neuroscience PhD Program alum Alex Huth, Gallant lab.
Our community includes over 70 faculty members in 12 academic departments who deepen our understanding of the brain and the rest of the nervous system through neurotechnology innovation and original research. Explore the research interests of Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute faculty below, and click on their website links for more information. Current and prospective PhD Program students can click on the box, “Show only Neuroscience PhD Program Faculty,” to see which labs are part of our training program.
Current Faculty
Hillel Adesnik
Associate Professor of Neurobiology
Research Focus: Neural basis of sensation, perception, and action.
Helen Bateup
Associate Professor of Neurobiology
Research Focus: Molecular basis of synapse and circuit changes associated with epilepsy and autism.
Diana Bautista
Professor of Cell Biology & Development and Physiology
Research Focus: Molecular mechanisms underlying the sensations of itch, touch, and pain.
Eric Betzig
Professor of Physics and Cell Biology, Development & Physiology.
Research Focus: Development of new tools for imaging and image analysis to enable biological discovery
Kristofer Bouchard
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Neuroscience
Research Focus: Functional organization and dynamic coordination of sensorimotor networks underlying learned, skilled behaviors.
Stephen Brohawn
Associate Professor of Neurobiology
Research Focus: Molecular basis of sensory transduction and electrical signaling, especially mechanosensation.
Silvia Bunge
Professor of Psychology
Research Focus: Neural mechanisms, development, and plasticity of higher cognitive functions in humans.
Christopher Chang
Professor of Chemistry and Molecular Therapeutics
Research Focus: Chemical tools for imaging and optogenetics in neurobiology.
Anne Collins
Associate Professor of Psychology
Research Focus: Computational modeling of human learning, decision-making, and executive functions.
Emily Cooper
Assistant Professor of Vision Science and Optometry
Research Focus: Computational modeling of visual perception.
Yang Dan
Professor of Neurobiology, Pivotal Life Sciences Chancellor's Chair in Neuroscience
Research Focus: Neural circuits controlling sleep; mechanisms of executive control.
Michael DeWeese
Professor of Physics
Research Focus: Neural mechanisms underlying auditory processing and selective attention in the cerebral cortex and artificial neural networks.
Andrew Dillin
Professor of Immunology and Molecular Medicine
Research Focus: Genetic and molecular mechanisms regulating aging and aging-related disease.
David Feinberg
Acting Professor of Neuroscience
Research Focus: MRI technology development, mapping columnar and visual circuitry, modeling neurovascular coupling.
Daniel Feldman
Professor of Neurobiology, Coates Family Endowed Chair in Neuroscience
Research Focus: Sensory processing and plasticity in the somatosensory cortex.
Marla Feller
Professor of Neurobiology
Research Focus: Functional development and organization of neural circuits in the retina.
Yvette Fisher
Assistant Professor of Neurobiology
Research Focus: Flexibility of neural circuits for spatial navigation
John Flannery
Professor of Vision Science and Optometry
Research Focus: Gene therapies for inherited retinal degenerations.
David Foster
Associate Professor of Psychology
Research Focus: Encoding of spatial memory and navigation toward rewards by neural ensembles in the hippocampus.
Jack Gallant
Professor of Psychology and Co-director of the Brain Imaging Center (BIC)
Research Focus: Identifying cortical maps to discover how the brain represents information about the world and its own mental states.
Andrea Gomez
Assistant Professor of Neurobiology
Research Focus: Instructive cues for neural form and function
Lin He
Professor of Cell Biology, Development and Physiology
Research Focus: Cilia biology, Choroid plexus function in cerebrospinal fluid production
Ming Hsu
Associate Professor of Business Administration
Research Focus: Neural basis of economic and consumer decision-making.
Ehud Isacoff
Professor of Neurobiology, Evan Rauch Chair in Neuroscience, Co-Director of Weill Neurohub
Research Focus: Mechanisms of ion channel function, synapse development, plasticity, and neural circuit function.
Richard Ivry
Distinguished Professor of Psychology
Research Focus: Cognition and action, with an emphasis on how people select actions, learn skills, and produce coordinated movements.
William Jagust
Professor of Public Health
Research Focus: Anatomic, biochemical, and neurochemical bases of brain aging and dementia.
Na Ji
Professor of Neurobiology and Physics
Research Focus: Novel imaging methods to understand the brain.
Daniela Kaufer
Professor of Integrative Biology
Research Focus: Molecular mechanisms of brain plasticity in response to stress and neurological insults.
Preeya Khanna
Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Research Focus: Neural basis of dexterous motor skills, Neurotechnology for restoring and rehabilitating movement
Richard Kramer
Professor of Neurobiology
Research Focus: Novel chemical reagents for non-invasive optical sensing and manipulation of ion channels and synapses.
Lance Kriegsfeld
Professor of Psychology
Research Focus: Brain and endocrine regulation of circadian rhythms.
Stephan Lammel
Associate Professor of Neurobiology
Research Focus: Midbrain dopamine circuits in reward-based behaviors and pathological changes in addiction, depression and schizophrenia.
Markita Landry
Associate Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Research Focus: Exploiting nanomaterials to probe and characterize complex biological systems at the nano-scale; nanosensors for brain chemistry.
Samantha Lewis
Assistant Professor of Cell Biology, Development and Physiology
Research Focus: Mitochondrial biogenesis, mitochondrial genome inheritance, organelle assembly, DNA replication, cell metabolism, interactions between membrane-bound organelles
Lexin Li
Professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology
Research Focus: Statistical neuroimaging analysis, brain connectivity analysis, imaging causal inference, multimodal and longitudinal imaging analysis, and imaging tensor regression.
Chunlei Liu
Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and Co-director of the Brain Imaging Center (BIC)
Research Focus: MRI technology development for the study of neural circuits and modulation.
Ellen Lumpkin
Professor of Cell Biology, Development and Physiology
Research Focus: To elucidate force transduction mechanisms that initiate the senses of touch and pain.
Michel Maharbiz
Adjunct Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Research Focus: Building micro- and nano- scale machine interfaces to cells and organisms, including development of neural dust technology.
Evan Miller
Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Biophysics & Structural Biology
Research Focus: Development and application of molecular tools for studying neuroscience.
Bruno Olshausen
Professor of Vision Science and Optometry and Director of the Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience
Research Focus: Computational models of sensory coding and visual perception.
James Olzmann
Associate Professor of Cell Biology, Development and Physiology and Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology
Research Focus: Cellular lipid homeostasis, oxidative lipid damage and cell death, neurodegeneration
Steven Piantadosi
Associate Professor of Psychology and Co-director of the Institute of Cognitive and Brain Science (ICBS)
Research Focus: Understanding what computational processes support language acquisition, math learning, and general cognition.
Teresa Puthussery
Assistant Professor of Vision Science and Optometry
Research Focus: Processing of visual signals in the healthy and diseased retina.
Michael Rape
Professor of Cell Biology, Development and Physiology
Research Focus: Molecular Mechanisms of Cell Fate Decisions in Development and Disease
Austin Roorda
Professor of Vision Science and Optometry
Research Focus: Development of adaptive optics to track, measure, and correct the eye's imperfections.
David Schaffer
Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Research Focus: Engineering stem cell and gene therapeutics.
Randy Schekman
Professor of Cell Biology, Development and Physiology
Research Focus: Membrane assembly, vesicular transport, and membrane fusion among organelles of the secretory pathway
Karthik Shekhar
Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Research Focus: Single-cell genomics and statistical inference
Michael Silver
Professor of Optometry and Vision Science & Director of the Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics
Research Focus: Neurophysiological and neurochemical substrates of human visual perception, attention, and learning.
Friedrich Sommer
Adjunct Professor of Neuroscience
Research Focus: Theoretical principles of learning and perception.
Rowland Taylor
Professor of Vision Science and Optometry
Research Focus: Structure and function of neural circuits in the retina.
Frédéric Theunissen
Professor of Psychology and Director of the Neuroscience PhD Program
Research Focus: Perception of complex sounds.
Doris Tsao
Professor of Neurobiology, Nan Fung Life Sciences Faculty Scholar
Research Focus: The Tsao lab seeks to understand how the brain builds a model of the visual world.
Matthew Walker
Professor of Psychology
Research Focus: The impact of sleep on human health and disease.
Joni Wallis
Professor of Psychology & Equity Advisor
Research Focus: Neuronal mechanisms underlying high-level cognitive and behavioral processes.
Kevin Weiner
Associate Professor of Psychology
Research Focus: Models to explain how brain structure and function contribute to measurable behaviors (e.g. face perception)
David Whitney
Professor of Psychology
Research Focus: Visual perception and attention.
Linda Wilbrecht
Associate Professor of Psychology
Research Focus: Experience dependent plasticity and the development of circuits involved in value based decision making.
Ke Xu
Associate Professor of Chemistry
Research Focus: Super-resolution fluorescence microscopy to interrogate cellular processes at the nanoscale.
Michael Yartsev
Associate Professor of Bioengineering
Research Focus: Neural basis of complex spatial and acoustic behaviors.
Jacob Yates
Assistant Professor of Optometry & Vision Science
Research Focus: How populations of neurons in cortex encode the visual world. Using statistical and machine learning models to understand neural activity and human perception. How information generated by eye movements is utilized by cortical circuits.
Emeriti and Professors of the Graduate School
Martin Banks
Professor of Vision Science and Optometry
Research Focus: Visual space perception and sensory combination.
John Clarke
Professor of the Graduate School of Physics
Research Focus: Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices such as ultralow-frequency MRI.
Howard Fields
Adjunct Emeritus Professor of Neuroscience UC Berkeley, Professor Emeritus of Neurology and Physiology UCSF
Research Focus: Mesolimbic circuits involved in goal directed behaviors, opioid regulation of synaptic function.
Ralph D. Freeman
Professor Emeritus Optometry and Vision Science
Research Focus: Central Visual Pathways: Systems and Computational Neuroscience
Robert Knight
Professor of the Graduate School of Psychology
Research Focus: Neural coding underlying goal-directed behavior and development of brain-machine interfaces for motor and language prostheses.
John Ngai
Professor Emeritus of Neurobiology
Research Focus: Understanding the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying the function, development and regeneration of the vertebrate olfactory system.
Geoff Owen
Professor Emeritus of Neurobiology
Research Focus: Comprehensive theory of retinal image processing.
Mu-ming Poo
Professor Emeritus of Neurobiology
Research Focus: Formation and plasticity of synapses, and activity-dependent modification of neural circuits.
Kristin Scott
Professor Emerita of Genetics, Genomics, Evolution, and Development
Research Focus: Taste detection, processing, and behaviors.
Gerald Westheimer
Professor of the Graduate School Division of Neurobiology
Research Focus: Perceptual learning in spatial visual tasks.
Bob Zucker
Professor of the Graduate School Division of Neurobiology
Research Focus: Mechanisms underlying regulation of synaptic transmission.
