Professor David J. Anderson

Seymour Benzer Professor of Biology
Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Director and Leadership Chair of the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience

A.B., Harvard University, 1978; Ph.D., Rockefeller University, 1983. Assistant Professor, Caltech, 1986-92; Associate Professor, 1992-96; Professor, 1996-2004; Roger W. Sperry Professor, 2004-09; Benzer Professor, 2009-. Assistant Investigator, 1989-92; Associate Investigator, 1992-97; Investigator, 1997-.

David J. Anderson, Ph.D., is Seymour Benzer Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology where he has been on the faculty since 1986.  Dr. Anderson is also Director and Leadership Chair of the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Dr. Anderson received his A.B. from Harvard, Ph.D. from the Rockefeller University under Günter Blobel, and was a postdoctoral fellow with Richard Axel at Columbia.   

For the first 20+ years of his career, Anderson's research focused on the biology of neural crest stem cells.  He was the first to isolate a multipotent self-renewing stem cell for neurons and glia, and subsequently identified growth factors and master transcriptional regulators that control their differentiation into neurons vs. glia, as well as their self-renewal.  Anderson has also made important contributions to angiogenesis and nerve-blood vessel interactions, including the discovery that arteries and veins are genetically distinct from before the onset of heartbeat.  

Beginning in the early part of the last decade, Anderson gradually switched his research focus from neural development to the study of neural circuits underlying innate behaviors that are associated with emotional states, including defensive behaviors and inter-male aggression.  His work employs both mice and the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster as model organisms, and incorporates optogenetics, pharmacogenetics, electrophysiology, in vivo imaging and (in collaboration with Prof. Pietro Perona in the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences), quantitative behavior analysis using machine vision-based approaches.  

Dr. Anderson played a key advisory role in the initial foundation of the Allan Institute for Brain Sciences and the Allen Brain Atlas, and now serves on their Scientific Advisory Board, as well as on the Advisory Council for Project MindScope and the Connectional Atlas.  He has also been a Visiting Scientist at HHMI's Janelia Farm Research Campus.  Dr. Anderson received the Alden Spencer Award in Neurobiology from Columbia University in 1999, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2007. 

Awards and Honors