Rate My Professor Gilad Barnea

Gilad Barnea is the Sidney A. Fox and Dorothea Doctors Fox Professor of Ophthalmology, Visual Science, and Neuroscience at Brown University. He earned a B.Sc. cum laude in Biology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1989, followed by an M.Sc. in 1992 and a Ph.D. in 1995 in Pharmacology from New York University, where his dissertation focused on the molecular characterization of a new family of receptor tyrosine phosphatases. After completing postdoctoral work with Dr. Richard Axel at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Columbia University, he joined Brown University in 2007 as Assistant Professor of Neuroscience. He advanced to Associate Professor and then full Professor, holding additional titles including Robert and Nancy Carney Assistant Professor of Neuroscience and the endowed Fox Professorship. Barnea serves as Director of the Center for the Neurobiology of Cells and Circuits at the Carney Institute for Brain Science, Director of the NIH-Brown Graduate Partnership Program, and Co-Director of the Neuroscience Graduate Program.

His research centers on sensory neural circuits, particularly how the brain processes olfactory and gustatory information and integrates it with internal states to guide behavior, using model systems such as mice and Drosophila. He has developed innovative molecular genetic tools for transsynaptic circuit tracing, including trans-Tango and retro-Tango, which have enabled detailed mapping of neural pathways involved in taste and smell. Barnea has authored numerous peer-reviewed publications in leading journals such as Cell, Neuron, Science, Nature Communications, and eLife, with key contributions on olfactory receptor choice, epigenetic mechanisms in sensory neurons, and circuit analysis in flies. He is a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences, a Kavli Fellow, and recipient of multiple EUREKA grants from the NIH as well as innovation awards from Brown’s Institute for Brain Science. Barnea also contributes to graduate education and program leadership at the university.