Joseph Takahashi

Joseph S. Takahashi is a Japanese American neurobiologist and geneticist. Takahashi is a professor at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center as well as an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Takahashi's research group discovered the genetic basis for the mammalian circadian clock mutation in 1994 and identified the Clock gene in 1997. Takahashi was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2003.

Background

Takahashi graduated from Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville, Maryland in 1970. Takahashi attended Swarthmore College and graduated with a degree in biology in 1974. He worked with Patricia DeCoursey at the University of South Carolina for a year after graduation and then applied to work with Michael Menaker at the University of Texas, Austin. Menaker ultimately moved to the University of Oregon where Takahashi received his neuroscience Ph.D. in 1981. Takahashi was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health for two years under Martin Zatz before assuming a faculty position in Northwestern University's Department of Neurobiology and Physiology in 1983, where he held a 26-year tenure. Takahashi joined the faculty at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas in 2008 as their Loyd B. Sands Distinguished Chair in Neuroscience. Takahashi also serves as a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Hypnion, Inc., a company focused on the development of novel therapeutics for central nervous system disorders affecting sleep and wake-alertness as well as circadian rhythm abnormalities. He also serves as a member of the editorial boards of Neuron, Physiological Genomics and Journal of Biological Rhythms.