Liqun Luo

Dr. Liqun Luo is a Professor of Biology at Stanford University, Professor by courtesy of Neurobiology at Stanford Medical School, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. Luo seeks to understand how neural circuits are assembled during development and how they contribute to sensory perception. He has developed new methods for tracing neural connections in the brain, thus enabling exploration of fundamental issues of neural structure, connectivity, and development. One of his keystone contributions was the creation of a genetic method—mosaic analysis with a repressible cell marker (MARCM) that enables scientists both to label small groups of neurons and to delete or express genes specifically in these cells. He used this technique to explore the assembly of neural circuits during development and the circuits that mediate sensory perception in the fruit fly and mouse. His research revealed that neurons in the fly brain prune their axons dramatically during development through local axon degeneration. He is also known for his discovery that olfactory projection neurons form an orderly, complex map in the brains of flies and mice. His research currently focuses on the questions: How are neurons in the brain organized into circuits to process information? How are these circuits assembled during development? The Luo lab addressed these questions through four core research programs: (1) Organization of the fly and mouse olfactory systems; (2) Assembly of the fly olfactory circuit; (3) Explorations of mammalian neural development; and (4) Development of genetic tools to probe neural circuit assembly and organization. Dr. Luo is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences in addition to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received numerous awards for his research including an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, the McKnight Technological Innovation in Neuroscience Award, the Society for Neuroscience Young Investigator Award, the NIH Jacob Javits Award, the H. W. Mossman Award, the Hughes Collaborative Innovation Award, and the Lawrence Katz Prize. He is the author of a recently published textbook Principles of Neurobiology.