Robert C. Malenka, M.D., Ph.D.
Distinguished Investigator

Dr. Malenka is the Pritzker Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Director of the Pritzker Laboratory at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Trained as both a clinical psychiatrist and cellular neurobiologist, he has been at the forefront of helping to apply the knowledge gained from basic neuroscience research to the treatment and prevention of major neuropsychiatric disorders. He graduated from Harvard College in 1978 and received an M.D. and Ph.D. in neuroscience from Stanford University in 1983. After completing a psychiatry residency at Stanford and postdoctoral research at U.C.S.F., he joined the U.C.S.F. faculty for 10 years as Professor of Psychiatry and Physiology and Director of the Center for the Neurobiology of Addiction. He returned to his present position at Stanford in 1999. He has been the recipient of numerous awards for his research contributions including: the Society for Neuroscience Young Investigator Award (1993); the Daniel H. Efron Award from the American College of Neuropsychopharmacolgoy (1998); the Dargut and Milena Kemali Foundation International Prize in Neuroscience (2000); the CINP-Lilly Neuroscience Basis Research Award (2002); a MERIT Award from N.I.M.H. (2001-2011); a Distinguished Alumni Award from Stanford Medical School (1998) and the Perl/UNC Neuroscience Prize (2006). He is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His public service includes serving on the National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse, NARSAD’s Scientific Advisory Board and as a Councilor for the Society for Neuroscience. He is a member of the editorial boards of many prominent journals including Neuron, Trends in Neuroscience and the American Journal of Psychiatry. His research findings have been published in over 170 papers and he has co-authored a major textbook entitled Molecular Neuropharmacology: A Foundation for Clinical Neuroscience (McGraw Hill, 2001). His laboratory continues to combine sophisticated molecular and cellular techniques to study how synaptic communication in critical mammalian brain circuits is modified during normal and abnormal behavior and in response to drugs.

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