Donald Pfaff
The Rockefeller University
Prof.Donald Pfaff, The Rockefeller University
Thursday March 31, 2016 – 8 p.m.
Professor Pfaff is Professor and Head of Laboratory, Neurology and Behaviour.
Dr. Pfaff graduated from Harvard College magna cum laude and received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1965. He joined Rockefeller in 1966 as a postdoc and was named assistant professor in 1969. He was granted tenure in 1973 and promoted to full professor in 1978. Dr. Pfaff is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The author of several books on the brain and behavior, he received the 2005 Award for Excellence in Professional and Scholarly Publishing (medical science category) of the Association of American Publishers for his book, Brain Arousal and Information Theory. He received the 2010 Ipsen Foundation Prize in Neuronal Plasticity and the Daniel S. Lehrman Lifetime Achievement Award in Behavioral Neuroendocrinology in 2011.He uses molecular, neuroanatomical and neurophysiological methods to study the cellular mechanisms by which the brain controls behavior. His laboratory’s research has focused on steroid hormone effects on nerve cells as they direct natural, instinctive behaviors, as well as the influences of hormones and genes on generalized brain arousal.