Maria Geffen is a leader in the field of auditory neuroscience. She is interested in the way the brain encodes information about the world and how our perception is shaped by our emotional state and experience. Geffen combines computational and biological approaches to study the mechanisms behind dynamic auditory perception, memory and learning.

Geffen first became interested in systems neuroscience through her undergraduate thesis under mentorship of John Hopfield at Princeton University, in which she explored the mechanics of whisking in rats. She studied texture encoding in the somatosensory system with Christopher Moore at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during her first two years of graduate school at Harvard University. She completed her Ph.D. in the laboratory of Markus Meister at Harvard University, where she discovered a novel retinal circuit for processing moving images. After her Ph.D., she was a fellow at the Center for Physics and Biology at Rockefeller University, where she worked under mentorship of Marcelo Magnasco, exploring the dynamics of natural sounds.

Geffen has been directing the Laboratory for Auditory Coding at the University of Pennsylvania since 2010. Her recent discoveries include: identifying a novel cell type that supports hearing of unexpected sounds; establishing the connection between emotional learning and sound perceptual acuity; and elucidating the neuronal code for representation of communication signals in the brain. Her scientific results are regularly published in well-recognized journals, including Nature Neuroscience, eLife and PLoS Biology. Her research accomplishments have been recognized with prestigious awards, including the Burroughs Wellcome Career Award at the Scientific Interface, the Klingenstein Foundation Award in Neurosciences, the Human Frontiers in Science Foundation Young Investigator Award, the Auditory Neurophysiology Young Investigator Spotlight Award and the Kaufman Foundation New Initiative Grant. Her research is supported by multiple grants from the NIH, including NIDCD and the BRAIN Initiative, as well as by private and international foundations. She serves as a permanent member on an NIH review panel, and has served as the general chair and workshop director for multiple national and international meetings. She currently serves as a co-director of the Cajal Course in Computational Neuroscience, and an organizer of the E.A.R.S. seminar series. Geffen is a dedicated mentor and her trainees have won the Brain Research Foundation Young Investigator Award, multiple Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Awards from the NIH and the Saul Winegrad Award for Outstanding Dissertation.