Rate My Professor Luis Hernandez-Nunez

Hernandez-Nunez’s research focuses on the circuit mechanisms underlying heart-brain interactions and organismal circuits that implement multiorgan coordination and feedback control. He employs advanced engineering, genetics, and computational methods to study neural feedback control of organ function, primarily using larval zebrafish models. His academic appointments at Stanford include membership in Bio-X, the Cardiovascular Institute, the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance, the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, and the Sarafan ChEM-H faculty fellowship. He has received numerous honors, including the Warren Alpert Distinguished Scholar award, Branco Weiss Faculty Fellowship, Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface, Terman Faculty Fellowship, and the Leadership Award from the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. Key publications include work on the emergence of functional heart-brain circuits in a vertebrate, imaging whole-brain activity to understand behavior, and studies on thermal homeostasis and olfactory systems in Drosophila. He contributes to the field through roles in professional societies and awards supporting interdisciplinary research in neuroscience and physiology.