Rate My Professor Gregory Scherrer

Grégory Scherrer, PharmD, PhD, joined the faculty of the Stanford University School of Medicine in 2012 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine, with additional appointments in the Departments of Neurosurgery and Molecular and Cellular Physiology. He established the Scherrer Laboratory at Stanford, which investigates the neurobiological mechanisms underlying pain perception and opioid analgesia. The lab examines the sensory, emotional, and cognitive dimensions of pain and the actions of opioids in neural circuits that produce pain relief as well as side effects such as addiction. Scherrer earned his PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the University of Strasbourg in France. He completed postdoctoral training in the neurobiology of pain and its control at the University of California, San Francisco, and in the neurophysiology of opioids at Columbia University. His research combines molecular and cellular biology, neuroanatomy, electrophysiology, optogenetics, and behavioral approaches to identify neural circuits involved in pain and to elucidate how opioids regulate activity in these circuits. In 2019, Scherrer and colleagues at Stanford published findings identifying specific brain cells responsible for the unpleasant emotional experience of pain, distinct from pain sensation itself. He received a Rita Allen Foundation Scholar award in recognition of his work. Scherrer served on the faculty at Stanford until 2019.