Harold Burgess

Dr. Harold Burgess is a Senior Investigator and Head of the Section on Behavioral Neurogenetics at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). His research focuses on understanding how neural circuits modulate behavior and development in zebrafish larvae, with an emphasis on sensorimotor processing, neurodevelopmental disorders, and brainstem circuitry.

Dr. Burgess holds a B.S. from the University of Melbourne and a Ph.D. from the Weizmann Institute of Science. He completed postdoctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania before joining NICHD in 2008, where he became a tenured Senior Investigator in 2015. His lab develops genetic tools, computational methods, and behavioral assays to study neural circuits, including the Brain Browser, a 3D gene expression atlas.

Key research interests include prepulse inhibition (a schizophrenia-linked behavior), flow-induced arousal, and neurodevelopmental disorder models using CRISPR/Cas9. Collaborations with clinical researchers enable phenotyping of zebrafish models for human mutations.

Lab members include staff scientists, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students such as Reid Doctor. The lab’s work has been published in journals like *Science Advances*, *Nature Communications*, and *PLoS Biology*.

Tools developed by the lab include software for behavior tracking (Flote), brain morphometry (CobraZ), and transgene design (CodonZ). The section is located in Bethesda, MD, and actively recruits postdoctoral researchers.