Robert Gerlai

Biography

Education and positions
Dr. Gerlai received his Ph.D. from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences with the highest distinction in 1989. He has held numerous academic positions in Europe and North America (Eötvös University of Budapest, Mount Sinai Hospital Research Institute of Toronto, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis, University of Hawaii Honolulu), and he also held leadership positions in the US biotechnology and biopharmaceutical research industry working as a senior research scientist and Vice President (Genentech Inc. South San Francisco, Eli Lilly & Co. Indianapolis, Saegis Pharmaceuticals Half Moon Bay) before joining University of Toronto (Misssissauga campus) in 2004, where he has been full professor at the Department of Psychology since 2008 and where he currently holds the John Carlin Roder Distinguished Professor in Behavioural Neuroscience position.

Awards
Dr. Gerlai received the Distinguished Scientist Award from the International Behavioral and Neural Genetics Society (IBANGS) in 2013. In 2014, he received the John Wiley Distinguished Speaker Award from the International Society of Developmental Psychobiology (ISDP). In 2015 he was awarded the University of Toronto Mississauga Excellence in Research Award. In 2019 he received the Outstanding Achievement Award by the International Behavioral Neuroscience Society (IBNS).

International Service for Science
Dr. Gerlai is member of editorial boards of F1000, PLOS ONE, Learning and Behavior, Genes Brain and Behaviour, Neurotoxicology and Teratology, Current Psychopharmacology, Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, and Behavior Brain Functions. He is Associate Editor of Frontiers in Genetics of Complex Traits, Review Editor for Frontiers in Neuroscience and Section Editor for BioMedCentral Neuroscience. He has edited several special issues of scientific journals and served as editor and co-editor of handbooks on molecular genetic approaches in behavioural neuroscience, including one that was published in 2018 (Molecular-Genetic and Statistical Techniques for Behavioral and Neural Research. 1st Edition ISBN 9780128040782) and in 2020 (Behavioral and Neural Genetics of Zebrafish, 1st Edition ISBN: 9780128175286). He has been serving as a scientific referee for more than 70 scientific journals, and has been advising major grant funding agencies and served as grant referee for multiple panels of the National Institutes of Health (NIH, USA), National Science Foundation (NSF, USA), Wellcome Trust (UK), Israeli Science Foundation, South Korean Science Foundation, Hungarian Scientific Research Foundation, German Research Foundation, Austrian Science Foundation, French National Research Agency, the Human Frontiers Science Foundation, the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. He is founding member of the International Behavioral and Neural Genetics Society, IBANGS, and was the treasurer and member-at-large of this Society. He was USA Councillor of the International Behavioral Neuroscience Society (IBNS) and has also served as Chair of several committees of IBNS. He has been elected Fellow of IBNS since 2005, and he was the first two term President of IBNS (in 2007 and 2008).

Research areas and accomplishments
Dr. Gerlai’s research is on the psychological, molecular and neurobiological mechanisms of animal behaviour. He has published over 300 papers in peer reviewed scientific journals in addition to several book chapters and books. According to Google Scholar these papers have been cited over 17000 times, giving him an index of 67. He is particularly known for the discovery of the role of Eph tyrosine kinase receptors and their ephrin ligands in neuronal plasticity, learning and memory. He was among the first to use transgenic technology in animal memory research and showed that astrocytes were involved in neuronal plasticity. He is considered one of the leaders of neurobehavioural genetics in the world and the father of zebrafish behavioural neuroscience research. In his current laboratory, Dr. Gerlai has been developing novel behavioural testing tools for the zebrafish, and employs behavioural phenotyping, psychopharmacological and genetic approaches with zebrafish to study such questions as the mechanisms of alcohol abuse, fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, numerical cognition, social behavior and of learning and memory. He has trained a record number of undergraduate and graduate students in his laboratory, and is also an enthusiastic teacher outside of his laboratory teaching animal behaviour genetics, mechanisms of memory, and the neurobiological and evolutionary bases of behavior to undergraduate and graduate students. He has delivered several public lectures sometimes on controversial topics, including the question of free will, evolution and the human society, and the genetics of racism.