Ehud Isacoff

Dr. Ehud Isacoff is the Rauch Professor of Neuroscience and Director of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at UC Berkeley. He also directs Weill Neurohub East, an interdisciplinary, inter-campus collaboration with UCSF and University of Washington, whose goal is to speed transformative innovations in neuroscience from basic research and technology development, through to clinical care. Ehud is a world leader in the study of the ion channels and neurotransmitter receptors that mediate the chemical and electrical signaling of neurons. He has developed a series of novel optical neurotechnologies to observe and remotely control neurotransmission at synaptic connections between neurons and the activity in brain cells. He and his collaborators work on how experience alters brain activity to sharpen decision making and on neuromodulation, and has pioneered a chemical-genetic approach to treat blindness. Based on technology from the laboratories of Dr. Ehud Isacoff and John G. Flannery of UC Berkeley, and technology directed at enhanced ocular gene therapy delivery arising jointly between UC Berkeley and the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Vedere Bio was formed in the Atlas Venture incubator in 2020 and was since acquired by Novartis and spun out into Vedere Bio II. Ehud received his PhD in Physiology from McGill University in 1987 in the lab of Richard Birks and was a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Lily and Yuh Nung Jan at UCSF from 1988 to 1993 from where he moved to the UC Berkeley Department of Molecular and Cell Biology as a professor.