18 Facts About Karl Deisseroth

Karl Alexander Deisseroth was born on November 18,1971 and is an American scientist.

In 2019, Deisseroth was elected as a member of the US National Academy of Engineering for molecular and optical tools for his discovery and control of neuronal signals behind animal behavior in health and disease.

Karl Deisseroth is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the US National Academy of Medicine.

Karl Deisseroth earned his BA in biochemical sciences from Harvard University, and his MD and PhD in neuroscience from Stanford University in 1998.

Karl Deisseroth completed his medical internship and psychiatry residency at Stanford University School of Medicine.

Karl Deisseroth has led his laboratory at Stanford University since 2004.

Karl Deisseroth serves as an attending physician at Stanford Hospital and Clinics and has been affiliated with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 2009.

Karl Deisseroth named this field "optogenetics" in 2006 and followed up with optogenetic technology development work leading to many applications, including psychiatry and neurology.

For developing optogenetics, Karl Deisseroth received in 2010 the Nakasone Award; in 2013 the Lounsbery Award and the Dickson Prize in Science; in 2014 the Keio Medical Science Prize; and in 2015 the Albany Prize, Lurie Prize, Dickson Prize in Medicine, and Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.

Karl Deisseroth received the 2015 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biomedicine, jointly with Edward Boyden and Gero Miesenbock.

In 2016, Karl Deisseroth received the Massry Prize along with Peter Hegemann and Miesenbock for "optogenetics, a technology that utilizes light to control cells in living tissues".

Karl Deisseroth was then awarded Japan's highest private prize, the Kyoto Prize, in 2018, for "his discovery of optogenetics and the development of causal systems neuroscience", becoming the youngest recipient of the award to date.

Karl Deisseroth has published the notebook pages from early July 2004 of his initial experiment showing light activation of neurons expressing a channelrhodopsin.

Karl Deisseroth pointed out that an even earlier experiment had occurred and was published by Heberle and Buldt in 1994, in which functional heterologous expression of a bacteriorhodopsin for light-activated ion flow had been published in a non-neural system.

Karl Deisseroth is known for a separate class of technological innovation.

Karl Deisseroth's group has developed methods for chemical assembly of functional materials within biological tissue.

In 2013, Karl Deisseroth was senior author of a paper describing the initial form of this method, called CLARITY.

Karl Deisseroth is married to neuroscientist Michelle Monje, with whom he has four children.