Carla J. Shatz, PhD, Sapp Family Provostial Professor of Biology and Neurobiology at Stanford University, will be the next speaker in the 2014 Senior Vice Chancellor’s Laureate Lecture series, a yearlong program that highlights top biomedical researchers in their fields. Dr. Shatz’s lecture, “Developmental Critical Periods and Alzheimer’s Disease: Can Knowledge of One Help Cure the Other?” will take place at 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, December 10, in Lecture Room 6, Scaife Hall.

Dr. Shatz’s lab has long studied how genes and environmental factors shape brain circuitry. She has researched brain circuit development and function during various stages of life, including in utero, and has studied memory disorders. Early research by her lab revealed that our visual systems are initially imprecise and require neural activity to sharpen and develop. Ongoing studies have shown how certain molecular mechanisms affect synaptic plasticity and therefore affect neural developmental and memory disorders. When synaptic plasticity experiences disruption and when synapse disassembly occurs, memory loss associated with Alzheimer’s can follow. Dr. Shatz’s lab is studying how the disabling of the immune receptor PirB prevents the associated memory loss and may ultimately improve Alzheimer’s therapy.  

Dr. Shatz received her BA in chemistry from Radcliffe College at Harvard University and her MPhil degree from University College London. She received her PhD in neurobiology from Harvard, where she conducted postdoctoral studies, as well. After beginning her academic career at Stanford, she became a professor of neurobiology and was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator from 1994–2000. At Stanford, she is director of Bio-X, an institute that brings together University faculty from across the biosciences to explore new knowledge of biological systems to better human health.

Dr. Shatz is author of more than 100 published scientific articles and has served on editorial boards of scientific journals such as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and an elected foreign member of the Royal Society of London.