Mriganka Sur, PhD

Mriganka Sur is the Sherman Fairchild Professor of Neuroscience and Head of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Professor Sur studies the development, organization and plasticity of the cerebral cortex of the brain. He has discovered fundamental principles by which networks of the cerebral cortex are wired during development and change dynamically in adulthood. His laboratory has identified gene networks underlying brain plasticity, and used high resolution imaging methods to discover functional and structural changes in individual cells and synapses in the intact brain during development and learning. Recently, his group has demonstrated novel mechanisms underlying developmental brain disorders, and proposed innovative therapeutic approaches to treating such disorders.

Professor Sur received the B. Tech. degree (1974) in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and the Ph.D. degree (1978) in Electrical Engineering from Vanderbilt University, Nashville. After postdoctoral research at SUNY Stony Brook, he was appointed to the faculty of Yale University School of Medicine. Professor Sur has been a member of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT since 1986. His awards and honors include the Charles Judson Herrick Award of the American Association of Anatomists; the A.P. Sloan Fellowship; the McKnight Neuroscience Development Award; the Sigma Xi Distinguished Lectureship; and the Distinguished Alumnus Award of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. At MIT, he has received awards for outstanding teaching, and been honored with the Hans-Lukas Teuber Scholar Award in the Brain Sciences and the Fairchild Chair. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, India, the Neurosciences Research Program, USA, and the Rodin Academy, Sweden, and an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Third World Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Society of the UK.