Seth Grant

Professor Seth Grant is a distinguished Professor of Molecular Neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh, holding a Personal Chair in the Department of Neuroscience within the College of Medicine & Veterinary Medicine. He serves as Director of the Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences and leads the internationally renowned Genes to Cognition (G2C) Programme. His academic career spans multiple prestigious institutions including the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, University of Cambridge, and Florey Institute for Neuroscience and Mental Health in Melbourne.

Professor Grant's research focuses on understanding the fundamental mechanisms of behavior through studying the genes and proteins that control synapses - the connections between nerve cells. His work has revealed that multiprotein machines comprising synapse proteins are responsible for innate and learned behaviors, with their dysfunction underlying numerous brain diseases including Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, autism, depression, addiction and intellectual disability. Current research in his laboratory is centered on uncovering the scope and functional impacts of synapse diversity throughout the brain, developing methods for brain-wide mapping of protein composition at single-synapse resolution ('synaptome' maps).

His laboratory has characterized how the synaptome architecture changes throughout the lifespan and how mutations causing cognitive disorders reorganize synaptome maps. These findings have significant implications for understanding how information is stored and recalled in the brain. Recent publications demonstrate his team's work on evolutionary aspects of cognitive function, human-mouse proteome comparisons, and the molecular basis of brain diseases.

• IBANGS Distinguished Investigator Award (2019)
• FENS EJN Award (2020)
• Wesley College Foundation Medal (2017)
• Elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (2015)
• Kenneth B. Myer Award (2014)
• Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2011)

Professor Grant actively supervises PhD students including Wen Chyi Quah, Aisha Belhadi, and Candace Adams, and has received substantial research funding from the Wellcome Trust, European Research Council, Medical Research Council, Simons Initiative for the Developing Brain, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and Medical Research Scotland. His laboratory comprises a multidisciplinary team of senior researchers, postdoctoral fellows, research technicians, and students working at the forefront of synaptic neuroscience.