"Tomasz Nowakowski, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Neurological Surgery, Anatomy and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, and a member of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research. Trained in physiology, life sciences, and biomedical sciences at the University of Edinburgh, he completed postdoctoral research with Arnold Kriegstein in 2017. His research focuses understanding how the human brain develops and how genetic mutations interfere with the processes of normal brain development to give rise to neurodevelopmental disorders. His lab pioneered molecular tools for single-cell and spatial genomics, lineage tracing, and circuit mapping, leading to discoveries on progenitor fate competence, human-specific neurodevelopmental programs, astrocyte and vascular diversity, and mechanisms underlying autism and psychiatric risk variants.
Nowakowski has received major recognition including the Joseph Altman Award in Developmental Neuroscience, the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Sciences, and the Robertson Neuroscience Investigator Award. He plays leading roles in the NIH BRAIN Initiative Cell Atlas Network the Simons Foundation consortia. Dr. Nowakowski holds a CR Muthukrishnan Distinguished Chair at IIT Madras, India. He is a co-founder of two startups: Voltagen Inc. and Mreza Therapeutics."