Prof. Mriganka Sur is Director of the Simons Center for the Social Brain at MIT, which he founded after 15 years as head of MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. He is a pioneer in studying the organization, plasticity and dynamics of the brain’s cerebral cortex using experimental and theoretical approaches. He has discovered fundamental principles by which networks of the cerebral cortex are wired during development and change dynamically during learning. His laboratory has identified gene networks underlying cortical plasticity, and invented high resolution imaging methods for studying cells, synapses and circuits of the intact brain. His group has demonstrated novel mechanisms underlying disorders of brain development, and proposed innovative strategies for treating them.

Prof. Sur received a B. Tech. from IIT Kanpur, and a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University, Nashville. He has received the Distinguished Alumnus Award of IIT Kanpur, and named among its top 50 alumni. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society (UK), the US National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the World Academy of Sciences, and the Indian National Science Academy.