Dr. Mu-ming Poo was born in China, received his B.S. in physics from Tsinghua University in Taiwan (1970), and Ph.D in biophysics from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore (1974). Following postdoctoral training at Purdue University, he was appointed as Assistant Professor in Physiology at the University of California, Irvine in 1976, promoted to Associate Professor in 1979 and Professor in 1983. In 1985, he moved to Yale University School of Medicine, where he served as Research Professor in Molecular Neurobiology. During 1988-95, he was Professor of Biological Sciences at Columbia University. During 1996-2000, he held the Stephen W. Kuffler Chair in Neurobiology at University of California at San Diego and in 2000, he moved to the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently the Paul Licht Distinguished Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology. Since 1999, he has served as the founding Director of the Institute of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Head of the Laboratory of Neural Plasticity.

Dr. Poo’s Research Interests focus on cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying axon guidance, synaptogenesis and synaptic plasticity. He has received the following honors: Javitz Neuroscience Investigator Award of NIH (1998), Member of Academia Sinica (2000), AAAS Fellow (2001), Ameritec Prize (2001), Ray Wu Society Award (2002), Docteur Honoris Causa of Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris (2003), National Prize for International Cooperation of China (2005) and member of National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (2009). He has served on the Advisory Boards of the Brain Science Institute, RIKEN, Japan, the Institute of Molecular Biology and the Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taipei, and the Friedrich Miescher Institute, Switzerland. He has also served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Cell Biology (1994-2001), Neuron (99-), Journal of Neuroscience (99-04), NeuroSignals (01-), Biochemical & Biophysical Research Communication (03-), and Current Opinions in Neurobiology (04-). Progress in Neurobiology (05-) and Experimental Neurology (06-)

Additional website: http://mcb.berkeley.edu/faculty/NEU/poom.html