Marc Tessier-Lavigne is President of The Rockefeller University, where he is also Carson Family Professor and head of the Laboratory of Brain Development and Repair. Dr. Tessier-Lavigne is a world leader in the study of brain development and degeneration. He and his colleagues identified mechanisms that direct the wiring of the brain during embryonic development, work with implications for brain repair after injury and for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. The recipient of numerous honors and awards, Dr. Tessier-Lavigne is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and its Institute of Medicine.

Dr. Tessier-Lavigne received undergraduate degrees from McGill and Oxford universities, and a Ph.D. from University College London (UCL). After postdoctoral work at UCL and Columbia University, he held faculty positions at the University of California, San Francisco, and at Stanford University, where he was the Susan B. Ford Professor in the Humanities and Sciences and an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In 2003, he joined Genentech Inc., a leading biotechnology company, where he became Executive Vice President, Research, and Chief Scientific Officer, directing 1,400 scientists in disease research and drug discovery for cancer, immune disorders, infectious diseases and neurodegenerative disease. He joined The Rockefeller University in 2011.