Professor
Mriganka Sur
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Neuroscientist; Educator
Area
Biological Sciences
Specialty
Neurosciences
Elected
2003
Dr. Mriganka Sur is the Paul E. and Lilah Newton Professor of Neuroscience and Director of the Simons Center for the Social Brain at MIT, which he founded after 15 years as head of the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Sur studies the organization, development, and plasticity of the cerebral cortex of the brain using experimental and theoretical approaches. He has discovered fundamental principles by which networks of the cerebral cortex are wired during development and change dynamically during learning. His laboratory has identified gene networks underlying cortical plasticity, and pioneered high resolution imaging methods to study cells, synapses, and circuits of the intact brain. Recently, his group demonstrated novel mechanisms underlying disorders of brain development, and proposed innovative strategies for treating such disorders. Sur has received numerous awards and honors for his work, including the Charles Judson Herrick Award of the American Association of Anatomists, the A.P. Sloan Fellowship, the McKnight Development Award, the Hans-Lukas Teuber Scholar Award, the Distinguished Alumnus Award of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, the Sigma Xi Lectureship, and the Foundation Day Medal of the National Brain Research Center, India. At MIT, he has received awards for outstanding teaching and been recognized with the Sherman Fairchild and Newton Chairs. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of the UK, the National Academies of medicine, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Neuroscience Research Program, the National Academy of Sciences, India, the Rodin Academy, Sweden, and the Third World Academy of Sciences, in addition to his American Academy of Arts and Sciences membership. His publications appear in journals including Nature Biotechnology, Neuron, Neuroscience, and Science.
Last Updated