David J. Anderson, Ph.D. (Board Chair)
California Institute of Technology
David Anderson is professor of biology and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, CA, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1986. His research focuses on the mechanisms whereby stem cells generate the diverse specialized cell types of the developing nervous system.
In 1992, his laboratory achieved the first isolation of a multipotent, self-renewing stem cell for neurons and glia from a vertebrate embryo. Subsequently, Anderson’s group identified extracellular signals that instruct the differentiation of such stem cells along various lineages, and transcription factors that act as master regulators of the neuronal and glial fates inside these cells. Anderson has also made contributions to the study of blood vessel development, including the first discovery of gene expression differences between arteries and veins, and the finding that nerve fibers determine the pattern of arterial branching in the developing skin.
Anderson is the Roger W. Sperry Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. Dr. Anderson graduated from Harvard and received his Ph.D. degree at Rockefeller University, where he trained with Nobelist Günter Blobel. Dr. Anderson also performed postdoctoral studies at Columbia with Nobelist Richard Axel. Elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2007, Dr. Anderson has received numerous awards, including a Helen Hay Whitney Foundation Fellowship, National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, Searle Scholars Award, Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in Neuroscience, Javits Investigator in Neuroscience award from the NIH, Charles Judson Herrick Award in Comparative Neurology, Ferguson Award for Graduate Teaching, Ferguson Award for Biology Education, Ferguson Award for Graduate Teaching, Columbia University’s Alden Spencer Award, and Alexander Van Humboldt Award. He also is an elected associate of the Neurosciences Institute, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Named the Roger W. Sperry Professor of Biology at Caltech in 2004, he was named the Seymour Benzer Professor of Biology at Caltech in 2009. Anderson has been an advisor to the Allen Institute for Brain Science since its founding in 2002 and was instrumental in focusing the Institute's efforts on the Allen Mouse Brain Atlas.