Rate My Professor Mriganka Sur

Mriganka Sur is the Newton Professor of Neuroscience in the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and Director of the Simons Center for the Social Brain at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which he founded after serving 15 years as head of the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. He joined the faculty of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT in 1986 and is also Professor in that department. Dr. Sur received a B.Tech. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Vanderbilt University. His research examines the organization, plasticity, and dynamics of the cerebral cortex using experimental and theoretical approaches. He has discovered fundamental principles of how cortical networks are wired during development and change during learning, identified gene networks underlying cortical plasticity, pioneered high-resolution imaging methods to study cells, synapses, and circuits in the intact brain, demonstrated novel mechanisms of brain development disorders, and proposed strategies for treating such disorders. His laboratory has discovered core functional rules of inhibitory-excitatory neuronal circuits in the cerebral cortex and revealed dynamics of information processing across cortical areas. Dr. Sur has received the Krieg Cortical Discoverer Prize and numerous other awards and honors. He has been recognized at MIT with the Sherman Fairchild and Newton Chairs. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of the UK, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the World Academy of Sciences, the Indian National Science Academy, and the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering. He has trained over 80 doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows and received awards for outstanding teaching and mentoring.