Brief Biography
Mriganka Sur is the Sherman Fairchild Professor of Neuroscience and Head of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He received the B. Tech. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 1974, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering in 1975 and 1978, respectively, from Vanderbilt University, Nashville. After postdoctoral research at SUNY Stony Brook, he was appointed to the faculty of Yale University School of Medicine in 1983. He joined the faculty of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT in 1986. Professor Sur studies the organization, development and plasticity of the cerebral cortex of the brain, using a range of experimental and computational approaches. His laboratory has discovered fundamental principles by which networks of the cerebral cortex are wired during development and change dynamically in adulthood. His awards and honors include the Meghnad Saha Award of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, India; the Charles Judson Herrick Award of the American Association of Anatomists; the Sloan Fellowship from the A.P. Sloan Foundation; the McKnight Neuroscience Development Award from the McKnight Foundation; the Sigma Xi Distinguished Lectureship; and the Distinguished Alumnus Award of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. He is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Royal Society of the UK.