Jeffrey Macklis is the Max and Anne Wien Professor of Life Sciences in the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, and Center for Brain Science, Harvard University, and a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School (HMS), and was founding program head of neuroscience at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. He is a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) affiliate faculty member in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST).

Macklis attended MIT (a B.S. in bioelectrical engineering and a B.S. in literature), Harvard Medical School (Harvard-MIT HST Program) and graduate school at MIT within HST as a student of Richard L. Sidman. He was a postdoctoral fellow in developmental neuroscience at HMS, where he also trained clinically in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and neurology in the Harvard Neurological Training Program (no longer clinically active).

Macklis’ lab is directed toward both: 1) understanding molecular controls and mechanisms over neuron subtype specification, development, diversity, axon guidance-circuit formation and degeneration in the cerebral cortex; and 2) applying developmental controls toward both brain and spinal cord regeneration and directed differentiation for in vitro therapeutic and mechanistic screening. The lab focuses on neocortical projection neuron development and subtype specification; neural progenitor/‘stem cell’ biology; induction of adult cortical neurogenesis; subtype-specific axonal growth cone biology; and directed neuronal subtype differentiation via molecular manipulation of neural progenitors and pluripotent cells (ES/iPS).

Macklis is the recipient of a number of awards, including a Rita Allen Foundation Scholar Award, a Director’s Innovation Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s Office, the CNS Foundation Award; a Senator Jacob Javits Award in the Neurosciences from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health; and the Cajal-Krieg Cortical Discoverer Prize. He is both an Allen Distinguished Investigator of the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group and a Brain Research Foundation fellow. Most recently, he is the recipient of a 2017 NIH Director’s Pioneer Award.