Council Dates: October 2007 - May 2008
Independent Position: Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, Lisbon, Portugal
Dr. Michael Orger was a Helen Hay Whitney Fellow with Dr. Florian Engert in the Department of Molecular and Cellular biology at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Using the small, transparent brain of the zebrafish, he aimed to visualize the activity of individual neurons and to study circuits underlying simple behaviors. This work helps to provide an essential framework for studying neural development and understanding the behavioral impairments caused by neurological diseases. He earned his Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of California, San Francisco, California as a Howard Hughes predoctoral fellow, and studied natural sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge. He is now a Principal Investigator of the ‘Vision to Action’ research group, Champalimaud Research, Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, Champalimaud Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal.