Prof. John Elliott Dowling Harvard University, USA

Prof. John E. Dowling received his A.B. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. He taught in the Biology Department at Harvard from 1961 to 1964, first as an Instructor, then as Assistant Professor. In 1964 he moved to Johns Hopkins University, where he held an appointment as Associate Professor of Ophthalmology... read moreand Biophysics. He returned to Harvard as Professor of Biology in 1971, and is presently the Gordon and Llura Gund Research Professor of Neurosciences Emeritus. He was Chairman of the Biology Department at Harvard from 1975 to 1978 and served as Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences from 1980 to 1984. He was Master of Leverett House, Harvard University from 1981 to 1998. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a member of the American Philosophical Society. His research interests have focused on the vertebrate retina as a model piece of the brain. He and his collaborators have long been interested in the functional organization of the retina, studying its synaptic organization, the electrical responses of the retinal neurons, and the mechanisms underlying neurotransmission and neuromodulation in the retina. More recently, he has focused attention on zebrafish as a model system in which one can explore the development, genetics and color vision of a vertebrate retina.