Nelson Spruston BS, PhD

Nelson Spruston Senior Director of Scientific Programs, Spruston has oversight of the Science and Training team at Janelia. The group coordinates a number of science-related operations at Janelia, including recruitment and review of Group Leaders and Fellows (Zarixia Zavala-Ruiz), Conferences Programs (Janine Stevens), the Visiting Scientist Program (Zavala-Ruiz), and Student and Postdoctoral Programs (Erik Snapp). Spruston also oversees the Gene-Targeting and Transgenics resource (Caiying Guo).

Spruston’s lab explores the role of the hippocampus in learning and memory, with an emphasis on the properties of a diverse collection of cell types and how they come together to form a circuit that mediates the learning and recall of episodic memories.

Spruston obtained a B.Sc. degree in Physiology from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada (1981-85) and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, USA (1985-91). He did postdoctoral studies at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, Germany (1992-95) and then spent 16 years on the faculty at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, USA (1995-2011) before moving to Janelia.