Behavioural Neuroscience

BIOGRAPHY

ACADEMIC POSITION:
Robert Sapolsky is currently the John A and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor at Stanford University, holding joint appointments in several departments, including Biological Sciences, Neurology & Neurological Sciences, and Neurosurgery. In addition, he is a research associate at the National Museums of Kenya.

EDUCATION:
Robert Sapolsky received his BA in biological anthropology summa cum laude from Harvard University and subsequently attended Rockefeller University where he received his PhD in Neuroendocrinology working in the lab of Bruce McEwen, a world-renowned endocrinologist.

HONORS:
• MacArthur Fellowship genius grant in 1987
• Alfred P Sloan Fellowship
• Klingenstein Fellowship in Neuroscience
• National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award
• Young Investigator of the Year Awards from the Society for Neuroscience, the International Society for Psychoneuro-Endocrinology, and the Biological Psychiatry Society
• 2007 John P McGovern Award for Behavioral Science, awarded by the American Association for the Advancement of Science
• 2008 Wonderfest’s Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization

RESEARCH INTERESTS:
While his primary research, on stress and neurological disease, is in the laboratory, for 33 years he has made annual trips to the Serengeti of East Africa to study a population of wild baboons and the relationship between personality and patterns of stress-related disease in these animals.