Feedback From a Forward-Thinking Neuroethologist

Eve Marder, PhD, is the Victor and Gwendolyn Beinfield University Professor at Brandeis University and past president of the Society for Neuroscience (2008). Marder earned a BA from Brandeis University in 1969 and her PhD from UCSD in 1974. Marder conducted her postdoc at the University of Oregon and Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, France and has been a faculty member at Brandies since 1978. She is a member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Medicine, and American Philosophical Society, has won the Gruber Prize, Kavli Prize, NAS Neuroscience Prize, and Gerard Prize, and holds honorary doctorates from Bowdoin College, Princeton University, Tel Aviv University, and Universite de Liege. Marder was instrumental in demonstrating that neuronal circuits are not “hard-wired” but can be reconfigured by neuromodulatory neurons and substances, and in developing the dynamic clamp and models of intrinsic homeostasis.

Felix E. Schweizer is a professor in the department of neurobiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. Born in Basel, Switzerland, he received his PhD in biochemistry from the University of Basel and conducted his graduate research in the laboratory of Max M. Burger under the direction of Theo Schafer. He was a postdoctoral fellow first in the department of molecular and cellular physiology at Stanford University in the laboratory of Richard W. Tsien and then in the department of neurobiology at Duke University in the laboratory of George J. Augustine. His research focuses on the cellular underpinnings of network function with a focus on synaptic transmission.