Carla Shatz

Member of the Jury

Carla Shatz graduated from Radcliffe College in 1969 with a B.A. in Chemistry.  She was honored with a Marshall Scholarship to study at University College London, where she received an M.Phil. in Physiology in 1971.  In 1976, she received a Ph.D. in Neurobiology from Harvard Medical School, where she studied with the Nobel Laureates David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel.  During this period, she was appointed as a Harvard Junior Fellow.  From 1976-1978 she obtained postdoctoral training with Dr. Pasko Rakic in the Department of Neuroscience, Harvard Medical School. 

In 1978, Dr. Shatz moved to Stanford University, where she began her studies of the development of the mammalian visual system in the Department of Neurobiology; she attained the rank of Professor of Neurobiology in 1989.  In 1992, she moved her laboratory to the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, where she was Professor of Neurobiology and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.  In April, 2000, she assumed the Chair of the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School as the Nathan Marsh Pusey Professor of Neurobiology.  In 2007, she moved to Stanford University as Director of BioX, an Institute facilitating interdisciplinary research at the intersections of Life and Medical Sciences, Engineering, and other quantitative sciences. Her ongoing studies of how the orderly sets of connections present in the adult brain are wired up during development have gained her numerous honors, including the Society for Neuroscience Young Investigator Award in 1985, the Silvo Conte Award from the National Foundation for Brain Research in 1993, the Charles A. Dana Award for Pioneering Achievement in Health and Education in 1995, the Alcon Award for Outstanding Contributions to Vision Research in 1997, the Bernard Sachs Award from the Child Neurology Society in 1999, and the Weizman Institute Women and Science Award in 2000. 

The relevance of her research to child development and learning has been recognized in many places, including Time Magazine, and by the President and First Lady Hillary Clinton, who invited Dr. Shatz to speak at the White House Conference on Early Childhood Development and Learning in 1997.  In 1992, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 1995 to the National Academy of Sciences, in 1997 to the American Philosophical Society, and in 1999 to the Institute of Medicine.  Dr. Shatz is past president (1994-95) of the 26,000 member Society for Neuroscience and served on the Council of the National Academy of Sciences from 1998-2001.