The 30th Annual Murray L. Barr Lecture

Join us on Friday, October 27th, 2023, with the lecture beginning at 9:00am, where Dr. Tonegawa will join us to discuss “Generalizable knowledge is represented by overlapping memory engrams"

Dr. Tonegawa's received his B. Sc. from Kyoto University, followed by a Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). His groundbreaking work in immunology at the Salk Institute and the Basel Institute for Immunology earned him the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1987 for "his discovery of the genetic principle for generation of antibody diversity." 

Having transitioned to brain science, Dr. Tonegawa founded the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Center for Learning and Memory in 1994, which later became The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory. Today, he unravels the intricate mechanisms underlying learning and memory through advanced gene manipulation techniques. His research bears significant implications for psychiatric and neurological disorders. Dr. Tonegawa is currently the Picower Professor of Biology and Neuroscience at MIT and the Principal Investigator of the RIKEN-MIT Laboratory for Neural Circuit Genetics at MIT, as well as a RIKEN Fellow. He is also an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His accolades include the Order of Culture (Bunkakunsho), the Lasker Award, the Gairdner Foundation International Award, and the Robert Koch Prize.