Gwyneth Card Appointed Chair of Neuroscience

Gwyneth Card, associate professor of neuroscience (in the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute), has been appointed chair of the Department of Neuroscience at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.

She succeeds Steven A. Siegelbaum, who has led the department since 2009. Siegelbaum will continue in his role as professor of neuroscience and pharmacology.

Card serves as a principal investigator at Columbia's Zuckerman Institute and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She focuses on the sensory, motor, and brain cells that underlie movement in fruit flies to uncover universal principles about movement and how animals decide on a course of action. Card and her team study Drosophila escape behavior in ecologically relevant situations, combining new whole-brain connectivity map data and high-throughput, high-resolution behavioral quantification with genetic, electrophysiological, and functional imaging techniques.

Gwyneth joined Columbia in 2022 after serving as a group leader at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Janelia Research Campus. She received her PhD in bioengineering from the California Institute of Technology, a Master of Philosophy from the University of Cambridge, and a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University.