Karl Deisseroth

Karl Deisseroth is the D.H. Chen Professor of Bioengineering and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, and Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard, his PhD and MD from Stanford; he also completed postdoctoral training, a medical internship, and an adult psychiatry residency at Stanford. He is board-certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He also continues to be a practicing psychiatrist at Stanford with specialization in affective disorders and autism-spectrum disease, employing medications along with neural stimulation.

For his discoveries, Deisseroth has received the NIH Director's Pioneer Award (2005), the Zuelch Prize (2012), the PerlPrize (2012), the BRAIN prize (2013), the Pasarow Prize (2013), the Breakthrough Prize (2015) the BBVA Award (2016), the Massry Prize (2016) and the Harvey Prize from the Technion/Israel (2017), and among other honors, was the sole recipient for optogenetics of the 2010 Koetser Prize, the 2010 Nakasone Prize, the 2011 Alden Spencer Prize, the 2013 Richard Lounsbery Prize, the 2014 Dickson Prize in Science, the 2015 Keio Prize, the 2015 Lurie Prize, the 2015 Albany Prize, the 2015 Dickson Prize in Medicine, the 2017 Redelsheimer Prize, the 2017 Fresenius Prize, the 2017 NOMIS Distinguished Scientist Award, the 2018 Eisenberg Prize, and the 2018 Kyoto Prize. He was selected a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator in 2013, and was elected to the US National Academy of Medicine in 2010 and to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2012.