Joseph Luchsinger

Hi! I grew up in Columbus, Ohio, and enjoyed playingvarious sports as a kid, especially football. At the end of high school, I spent two weeks on an expedition in the Alaskan wilderness. Thereafter, sharing a dehydrated meal with friends while watching the sun set behind the mountains became my kind of luxury. I then moved to Cleveland to attend a small liberal arts school called Baldwin Wallace. There, I majored in neuroscience, psychology, and physics with minors in biology and chemistry. My physics professor gave me a passion for puzzles (eventually, we put a book of riddles together). You have a 5-gallon pail, a 3-gallon pail, and a water source (e.g., a hose). How can you measure exactly 4 gallons? Most importantly, I met an exchange student named Christelle three weeks before her study abroad ended. Following a linguistic faux-pas-filled year living with her family in France, we married the week after starting medical school in Nashville, Tennessee. Shortly after meeting her, I unofficially broke the world record for the world’s longest handshake, only to miss out on the actual record due to my partner’s syncopal episode during the Guinness sanctioned attempt in Times Square. At Vanderbilt School of Medicine, I was the president of my class before starting graduate work on the neurobiology of stress and addiction in the Winder lab. The best part of my PhD was the incredible people I worked with and learned from. I also got into advocacy during grad school and traveled to DC multiple times to talk about science funding with members of congress and their staff. On weekends, I cycle with classmates to an old biker bar. Our spandex cycling outfits are conspicuous when surrounded by leather jackets, but we carry on for the unbeatable pancakes.