Charles S. Zuker PhD

Charles S. Zuker, Ph.D., is an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a professor of biochemistry & molecular biophysics and of neuroscience in the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University, and a senior fellow at the Janelia Farm Research Campus. He was previously the Kevin and Tamara Kinsella Chair of Neurobiology and Distinguished Professor at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine. He is a graduate of the Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso in Chile (B.Sc.) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Ph.D.).

His research focuses on the biology of taste, and how receptors and neurons can turn reception into perception. Dr. Zuker is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine, and has been honored with the Alfred P. Sloan Award in Neurosciences, the Cogan Award for Vision Research, Columbia University’s W. Alden Spencer Award, and the International Flavor and Fragrances Award.