The Idea Organ

Dr Muotri is a Professor at the Departments of Pediatrics and Cellular & Molecular Medicine at UC San Diego and an Associate Director of CARTA, in addition to being the Director of the Stem Cell Program and of the Archealization Center at UC San Diego. Dr Muotri earned a BSc in Biological Sciences from the State University of Campinas in 1995 and a Ph.D. in Genetics in 2001 from the University of Sao Paulo, in Brazil. He moved to the Salk Institute as Pew Latin America Fellow in 2002 for postdoctoral training in the fields of neuroscience and stem cell biology. His research focuses on brain evolution and modelling neurological diseases using human-induced pluripotent stem cells and brain organoids. He has received several awards, including the prestigious NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, NARSAD, Emerald Foundation Young Investigator Award, Surugadai Award, Rock Star of Innovation, NIH EUREKA Award, and two Telly Awards for Excellence in Science Communication among several others.

Genevieve Konopka, Ph.D., became Chair of the Department of Neurobiology in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, effective July 1, 2025.

Dr. Konopka was Professor and Vice Chair of Neuroscience, the Jon Heighten Scholar in Autism Research, and the Townsend Distinguished Chair in Research on Autism Spectrum Disorders at UT Southwestern Medical Center. Dr. Konopka received dual B.S. degrees in Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Biology from MIT and completed her Ph.D. in Neurobiology at Harvard University. She also completed fellowships in developmental biology with Dr. Stephen Duncan at Medical College of Wisconsin and in neurogenetics with Dr. Dan Geschwind at UCLA.

She has been the recipient of numerous awards including a NARSAD Young Investigator Award, an NIH Pathway to Independence Award, a Basil O’Connor Scholar Award from the March of Dimes, a Young Investigator Award from the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR), a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, and an Understanding Human Cognition Scholar Award from the James S. McDonnell Foundation. The research in the Konopka lab focuses on understanding the molecular pathways important for human brain evolution that are at risk in cognitive disorders such as autism, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer’s disease. Her lab uses a combination of human neurons, animal models, and primate comparative genomics to uncover human-specific, disease-relevant patterns of gene expression. Recent work in her lab integrates gene expression with signatures of neuronal activity in the human brain. The Konopka lab is also part of the international Human Cell Atlas effort to map gene expression in every cell of the human body.