Eric Kandel

Fred Kavli Chair in Brain Science and Founding Director, Kavli Institute for Brain Science

Eric R. Kandel, MD, is University Professor at Columbia; Kavli Professor and Director, Kavli Institute for Brain Science; Co-Director, Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute; and Senior Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute. A graduate of Harvard College and NYU School of Medicine, Kandel trained in Neurobiology at the NIH and in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He joined Columbia University in 1974 as founding director of the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior. His laboratory researches the molecular mechanisms of memory storage in Aplysia and mice. Kandel is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London. He has been recognized with the Albert Lasker Award, the Heineken Award of the Netherlands, the Gairdner Award of Canada, the Harvey Prize and the Wolf Prize of Israel, the National Medal of Science USA and the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2000.