Gerald
D. Fischbach, M.D., assumed the position of Director, National Institute
of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health on
July 15, 1998. He has been the Nathan Marsh Pusey Professor of Neurobiology
and Chairman of the Neurobiology Departments of Harvard Medical School
and Massachusetts General Hospital since June of 1990. He previously served
for ten years as Edison Professor of Neurobiology and Chairman of the
Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology at Washington University Medical
School in St. Louis, Missouri. Dr. Fischbach received his M.D. degree
from Cornell University Medical School in New York and interned at the
University of Washington Hospital in Seattle, Washington. Throughout his
career, Dr. Fischbach has studied the formation and maintenance of synapses,
the junctions between nerve cells and their targets through which information
is transferred. His current focus is on trophic factors that influence
synapse efficacy and nerve cell survival. He is a past-President of the
Society for Neuroscience and he now serves on several medical and scientific
advisory boards. He is a member of the National of Academy of Sciences,
American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Institute of Medicine, and
he is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
and a non-resident Fellow of the Salk Institute.
