The OneNeuro Initiative at Johns Hopkins University is pioneering a unique interdisciplinary approach to understand the brain, develop successful treatments to prevent and cure brain diseases, and optimize brain function
School of Medicine
School of Medicine
Dr. Richard Huganir is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University with appointments in the Department of Neuroscience in the School of Medicine and the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. He is the Director of the Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience. Dr. Huganir received his Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry, Molecular and Cell Biology from Cornell University in 1982 where he performed his thesis research in the laboratory of Dr. Efraim Racker. He was a postdoctoral fellow with the Nobel Laureate, Dr. Paul Greengard, at Yale University School of Medicine from 1982-1984. Dr. Huganir moved to Rockefeller University as an Assistant Professor of Molecular and Cellular Neurobiology from 1984-1988. Dr. Huganir moved to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1988 as an Associate Investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and an Associate Professor in the Department of Neuroscience. Dr. Huganir became the Director of the Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience in 2006. Dr. Huganir’s career has focused on synapses, the connections between nerve cells in the brain. Dr. Huganir’s studies have shown that the regulation of neurotransmitter receptor function is a major mechanism for regulating neuronal excitability and connectivity in the brain and is critical for many higher brain processes, including learning and memory, and is a major determinant of behavior. Moreover, dysregulation of these mechanisms underlies many neurological and psychiatric diseases, including Alzheimer’s, ALS, schizophrenia, autism, intellectual disability, PTSD, as well as chronic pain and drug addiction. Dr. Huganir served as the President and Treasurer of the Society for Neuroscience. He has received the Young Investigator Award, the Julius Axelrod Award, the Ralph W. Gerard Prize in Neuroscience from the Society for Neuroscience, the Goldman-Rakic Award, and the Edward M. Scolnick Prize. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Institute of Medicine, and the National Academy of Sciences.
Patricia Janak is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University, with appointments in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and the Department of Neuroscience in the School of Medicine. Dr. Janak earned her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and conducted postdoctoral research at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health. From 1999 to 2014, Dr. Janak was faculty at the University of California, San Francisco, where she was the Howard J. Weinberger, M.D., Endowed Chair in Addiction Research at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Janak moved to Johns Hopkins in 2014. Dr. Janak studies neural processes of reward learning, both under normal conditions and in animal models relevant to substance use disorders. Janak and her laboratory members have made critical discoveries regarding the neurochemical and neuroanatomical bases of alcohol intake and relapse. Current work focuses on circuit level analysis of striatal systems and dopamine error signals during learning and decision making. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
