Anirvan Ghosh


Anirvan Ghosh is an American neuroscientist. His research has contributed to our understanding of the molecular mechanisms that regulate development and function of the mammalian brain. A major focus of his research has been to identify mechanisms that regulate neuronal connectivity and the effects of neuronal activity on brain development. He served as the Global Head of Neuroscience Discovery at F. Hoffmann-La Roche from 2011 to 2016 and as founding CSO of E-Scape Bio from 2016-2017. He was the Head of Research and Early Development at Biogen from 2017-2020 and is currently the CEO of Unity Biotechnology.

Biography

Anirvan Ghosh was born in 1964 in Bloomington, Indiana and grew up in Kanpur, India. After completing high school at Central School IIT Kanpur, he moved to the U.S. to pursue his undergraduate education at the California Institute of Technology. He graduated with a B.S. with honors in Physics from Caltech in 1985. From 1985 to 1990 he was a graduate student in the Stanford University Neurosciences Graduate Program, where he worked on the role of subplate neurons in establishing cortical connections in the laboratory of Carla J. Shatz. He received his Ph.D. in Neurobiology from Stanford University in 1991. His postdoctoral training was with Michael E. Greenberg at Harvard Medical School where he worked on regulation of differentiation by extracellular signals and calcium regulation of BDNF expression. From 1995 to 2003 he was on the faculty in the Department of Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. While at Johns Hopkins he cloned CREST as a calcium-regulated transcription factor and showed that it plays a critical role in brain development. In 2003 he moved to UCSD as the Stephen Kuffler Professor in the Neurobiology Section of the Division of Biological Sciences. His laboratory investigates regulation of synaptic connectivity and neural circuit formation in the mammalian brain. Ghosh served as the Global Head of Neuroscience Discovery at Roche from 2011-2016 and as the Head of Research and Early Development at Biogen from 2017-2020. Since 2020 he has served as CEO of Unity Biotechnology.

Awards