BEN BARRES
Professor of Neurobiology Stanford University School of Medicine Member of Stanford Neurosciences InstituteSTANFORD PRESS OFFICEIn his first two years of graduate school, Ben Barres (then Barbara Barres) was a neuroscience graduate student by day and a neurologist on nights and weekends. He began his PhD at Harvard Medical School in 1983 after completing full medical training: an MD from Dartmouth Medical School followed by four years of a neurology-focused residency at Cornell University hospitals in New York City.
“When I started graduate school, all of my medical school loans came due. I had to start paying them back, but my graduate-student stipend was $6,000—barely enough to live on. So I started to moonlight as a neurologist. I was covering a neurology practice at a local hospital, seeing patients and covering emergencies Friday night to Monday morning. On Monday mornings I would drag myself to the lab. It was very hard to take courses, be in the lab, and to work as a neurologist. After about two years, I came in Monday morning and my advisor saw how bad I looked and asked why I was doing this to myself. I told him that I had loans to pay and couldn’t on my stipend ...
