SEMINAR: Primal threats: the neural circuitry of predator and social fear

Dr. Cornelius Gross has been a group leader at the Mouse Biology Unit of EMBL since 2003. In January 2009 he was promoted to a tenured position as Senior Scientist and Deputy Head of the Unit. His research has focused on the role of genetic and environmental factors in shaping the development of brain circuits controlling fear and anxiety behavior in mice. Dr. Gross received undergraduate training in biophysics at the University of California, Berkeley and then pursued doctoral research at Yale University in the field of molecular biology and biochemistry in the laboratory of William McGinnis. Dr. Gross then joined the group of Rene Hen at Columbia University as a postdoctoral fellow where he began his work dissecting the role of serotonin in the control of behavior using molecular genetic tools in mice. There he discovered a developmental role for serotonin in determining life-long anxiety-related behavior and identified the serotonin receptor responsible for the therapeutic effects of antidepressants. His laboratory is currently focused on the characterizing hypothalamic and brainstem circuits that regulate social and predator fear and understanding the role of microglia in determining the wiring of behavioral circuits during development. In 2013 he was awarded an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) to study social and predator fear circuits in the brain. Earlier in his career Dr. Gross served two years as a science teacher at a public high school in New York City, where he gained an appreciation of the benefits and challenges of communicating science to a lay audience.