Corey Harwell is an associate professor in the Department of Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco. He obtained his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the laboratory of Elly Nedivi, where he studied neural-activity dependent pathways important for neural development and plasticity. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Arnold Kriegstein’s laboratory at the University of California, San Francisco, studying the development and formation of cortical circuits.

His lab is focused on understanding the genetic and epigenetic developmental programs that determine mature neural cell fates. Human genetic studies suggest that mutations of genes involved in early developmental processes are associated with a variety of neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders. Studies of the basic mechanisms regulating cell fate determination and circuit assembly may shed light upon the etiology of these complex disorders. The lab approaches these questions using circuit tracing, molecular biology and genetic tools in mice.