Boris Valery Zemelman (born September 10, 1967) is an American

neuroscientist A neuroscientist (or neurobiologist) is a scientist who has specialised knowledge in neuroscience, a branch of biology that deals with the physiology, biochemistry, psychology, anatomy and molecular biology of neurons, Biological neural network, n ...

who is one of the pioneers of

optogenetics Optogenetics is a biological technique to control the activity of neurons or other cell types with light. This is achieved by expression of light-sensitive ion channels, pumps or enzymes specifically in the target cells. On the level of individu ...

Personal life

Boris Zemelman, at the age of ten, immigrated to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

with his parents Valery and Evelina Zemelman, and lived in Wilton, Connecticut. He graduated from

Wilton High School Wilton High School is a public high school in Wilton, Connecticut, U.S., considered "one of Connecticut's top performers" in various measures of school success in 2007,Cowan, Alison Leigh, "Play About Iraq War Divides a Connecticut School", ''The ...

, and for his excellent academic performance was awarded Charles G. Mortimer Scholarships.Gordon E. Fairclough
''Wilton students reap awards for excellence''
in: The Hour vom 11. Juni 1985, S. 9f. auf Google News Archivsuche He studied Biochemistry at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, where he received his Doctorate with a dissertation on purification and characterization of a novel mammalian recombinase under professo
I. Robert Lehman
He is now an Assistant Professor of Neuroscience a
The Center for Learning and Memory
at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

. In the past, he was a guest researcher at the Dudman Lab at The Janelia Farm Research Campus

Howard Hughes Medical Institute The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) is an American non-profit medical research organization based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It was founded in 1953 by Howard Hughes, an American business magnate, investor, record-setting pilot, engineer, fil ...

(HHMI).

Research

After completing his dissertation, Zemelman began working in the laboratory of

James Rothman James Edward Rothman (born November 3, 1950) is an American biochemist. He is the Fergus F. Wallace Professor of Biomedical Sciences at Yale University, the Chairman of the Department of Cell Biology at Yale School of Medicine, and the Director ...

on SNARE proteins and their influence on the intracellular membrane fusion. Subsequently, Zemelman worked jointly with

Gero Miesenböck Gero Andreas Miesenböck (born 15 July 1965) is an Austrian scientist. He is currently Waynflete Professor of Physiology and Director of the Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour (CNCB) at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Magdalen C ...

to perform seminal experiments in 2002 and 2003 on selective stimulation of neurons using light, a field that came to be known as

. These techniques were later improved by

Karl Deisseroth Karl Alexander Deisseroth (born November 18, 1971) is an American scientist. He is the D.H. Chen Professor of Bioengineering and of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University. He is known for creating and developing the technolo ...

in 2005; these pioneering studies in optogenetics led to these three scientists being regarded as candidates for the Nobel Prize in 2013. In 2015 Zemelman and his colleagues received three grants totaling $4 million, to develop techniques for imaging and manipulating the activity of neurons in the brain. The grants were made through

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...

's Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative launched in 2014.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zemelman, Boris Valery American neuroscientists University of Texas at Austin faculty 1967 births Living people Place of birth missing (living people) Stanford University alumni People from Wilton, Connecticut Wilton High School alumni