John Rubenstein
American developmental neurobiologist and psychiatrist
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ToursExplore Lably’s 3D toursEarly life and education
Rubenstein was born in San Mateo, California. He graduated from the Thacher School in 1973 and received a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from Stanford University in 1977, graduating with honors, having done research with Randall Morriss, Arthur Kornberg, William Wickner, Douglas Brutlag, and David Clayton. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and became an associate member of Sigma Xi. He entered the M.D.-Ph.D. program at Stanford and earned his Ph.D. in Biophysics in 1982, working under Harden M. McConnell and James Rothman. From 1984 to 1986, he conducted postdoctoral research with François Jacob, Jean François Nicolas, and Joshua Sanes at the Pasteur Institute. Between 1986 and 1991, he completed clinical training in child psychiatry, and postdoctoral training with Roland Ciaranello at Stanford.
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Career
Rubenstein joined the UCSF Department of Psychiatry in 1991. He is affiliated with several programs at UCSF, including the Program in Biological Sciences, the Biomedical Sciences Program, and the Institute of Molecular Medicine.
He is also a co-founder of Neurona Therapeutics, a biotechnology company focused on developing cell-based therapies for epilepsy and other neurological disorders.
Research
Rubenstein is known for his work on the transcriptional and molecular mechanisms that regulate the development of the cerebral cortex and basal ganglia. His research has defined transcription factors such as DLX2, NKX2-1, and TBR1, and growth factors including FGF8 and FGF17, that play critical roles in regional and cell-type specification during brain development. He has studied the development of both cortical and subcortical projection neurons and interneurons, and showed that cortical interneurons are generated in the basal ganglia and migrate tangentially to the cortex. He has also investigated the roles of transcription factors in axon pathfinding and synapse development.
His more recent work uses epigenomics to identify human and mouse genomic regulatory elements (enhancers) that are active during forebrain development. In conjunction with his work on transcription factor functions, he is deciphering gene regulatory networks that control forebrain development, and that may be dysregulated in neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder and epilepsy.
Selected honors and awards
- 1977: Honors in Chemistry, Stanford University
- 2001: Elected to the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology
- 2004: Krieg Cortical Discoverer Award, Cajal Club
- 2006: Elected to the National Academy of Medicine
- 2016: APA Ittleson Award for Research in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
- 2016: Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- 2016: Ruane Prize for Outstanding Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Research by Brain & Behavior Research Foundation
- 2020: Elected to the National Academy of Sciences
- 2021: W. Maxwell Cowan Award for Developmental Neuroscience
- 2026: Gruber Prize in Neuroscience