Joseph S. Takahashi

Joseph S. Takahashi, PhD, is the Loyd B. Sands Distinguished Chair in Neuroscience, Investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and chair of the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center’s Peter O’ Donnell Jr. Brain Institute. He received a BA in biology from Swarthmore College in 1974 and a PhD in neuroscience from the University of Oregon, Eugene, in 1981. For postdoctoral training, he was a pharmacology research associate at the National Institute of Mental Health. His research interests are the molecular mechanism of circadian clocks, neuroscience, and the genetic basis of behavior. Takahashi pioneered the use of genetics in the mouse as a tool for discovery of genes underlying neurobiology and behavior, and his discovery of the mouse and human Clock genes led to a description of a conserved circadian clock mechanism in animals. He is the author of more than 300 scientific publications and the recipient of many awards including the Honma Prize in Biological Rhythms Research in 1986, W. Alden Spencer Award in Neuroscience from Columbia University in 2001, Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award from the Sleep Research Society in 2012, and the Gruber Neuroscience Prize in 2019. He was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2000, Member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2003, and Member of the National Academy of Medicine in 2014.