Karl Herrup, PhD

Karl Herrup is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Neuroscience and Cell Biology at Rutgers University, a position he has held since 2006. He received his Bachelor's degree from Brandeis University in Waltham, MA and his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Stanford University in 1974. After two postdoctoral fellowships—in neurogenetics at Children's Hospital/Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA, and in neuropharmacology at the Biozentrum in Basel, Switzerland—he joined the faculty of the Human Genetics Department of Yale Medical School in 1978. He became Director of the Division of Developmental Neurobiology at the E. K. Shriver Center in Waltham, MA in 1988. In 1992 he moved to Case Western Reserve University Medical School and University Hospitals of Cleveland where he directed the Alzheimer's Center from 1999 through 2005. In 2006 he moved to the Piscataway/New Brunswick campus of Rutgers University where he is Professor and Chair of the Department of Cell Biology and Neuroscience. In July 2012, he will move to Hong Kong to become the Head of Life Sciences at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His research has focused on the mechanisms that lead to the death of neurons during normal development and during disease. In recent years he has focused on the unexpected role played by cell cycle re-activation in neuronal cell death.