Professor Dr. Robert Malenka

Biography

Robert Malenka is the Pritzker Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. He is the Director of the Nancy Pritzker Laboratory and serves as the Deputy Director of the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute. Malenka graduated from Harvard College and received his M.D. and Ph.D. in neuroscience from Stanford University School of Medicine in 1983. Following six years of residency training in psychiatry at Stanford and four years of postdoctoral research at UCSF, he was appointed to UCSF as an Assistant Professor in Psychiatry and Physiology in 1989, eventually becoming a Full Professor in 1996. In 1999, he returned to Stanford University. His research focuses on the molecular mechanisms of neural communication and the role of circuit dysfunction in brain disorders such as addiction, Alzheimer’s disease, autism, and depression. Malenka has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Young Investigator Award from the Society for Neuroscience and the NARSAD Goldman-Rakic Prize for Outstanding Neuroscience Research. He is noted for his contributions to understanding synaptic plasticity and memory formation.

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