Marc Trevor Tessier-Lavigne

Dr. Marc Trevor Tessier-Lavigne is President and Carson Family Professor, Laboratory of Brain Development and Repair at Rockefeller University. His examines how neural circuits in the brain form during embryonic development and how nerve cells respond to injury. The results of that research, in turn, feeds into a related line of study that seeks to understand and document the mechanisms underlying nerve cell death, with the goal of developing therapies for brain and spinal cord injury as well as neurodegenerative disease such as Alzheimer's. 

Dr. Tessier-Lavigne received undergraduate degrees from McGill University and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He received a Ph.D. in neurophysiology from University College London in 1987 and performed postdoctoral work at University College London and at Columbia University. From 1991 to 2003, he held faculty positions at the University of California, San Francisco, and at Stanford University, where he was the Susan B. Ford Professor in the Humanities and Sciences. He was also an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He joined Genentech, a leading biotechnology company, in 2003, where he served as executive vice president for research and chief scientific officer. He joined Rockefeller as president and professor in March 2011.

Dr. Tessier-Lavigne is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine, a fellow of The Royal Society, a fellow of The Royal Society of Canada, a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (UK), a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the recipient of the Henry G. Friesen International Prize in Health Research, the Memorial Sloan Kettering Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Biomedical Research, the Ameritec Prize, the Ipsen Foundation Prize in Neuronal Plasticity, the Viktor Hamburger Award, the Wakeman Award, the Robert Dow Neuroscience Award, the Reeve-Irvine Research Medal, the Gill Distinguished Award in Neuroscience, the Burke Award and the W. Alden Spencer Award. His publications appear in numerous prominent journals including Cell, Nature, Neuron, and Science.