Alysson Muotri

Alysson R. Muotri is a professor in the Departments of Pediatrics and Cellular and Molecular Medicine at UC San Diego. Dr. Muotri earned a BSc in Biological Sciences from the State University of Campinas in 1995 and a Ph.D. in Genetics in 2001 from University of Sao Paulo, in Brazil. He moved to the Salk Institute as Pew Latin America Fellow in 2002 for a postdoctoral training in the fields of neuroscience and stem cell biology. He has been a Professor at the School of Medicine, University of California in San Diego since late 2008. He is currently a Director of the UCSD Stem Cell Program. His research focuses on modeling social neurological conditions, such as autism, and brain evolution using human cerebral organoids. He has received several awards, including the prestigious NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, NARSAD, Emerald Foundation Young Investigator Award, Tokyo Surugadai Award, Rock Star of Innovation, NIH-EUREKA among others.