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Michael Crair, PhD

Vice Provost for Research and William Ziegler III Professor of Neuroscience and Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Science
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Additional Titles

Vice Provost for Research, Office of the Provost

About

Titles

Vice Provost for Research and William Ziegler III Professor of Neuroscience and Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Science

Vice Provost for Research, Office of the Provost

Biography

Michael C. Crair is the William Ziegler III Professor in the Department of Neuroscience, Professor of Ophthalmology & Visual Science and Vice Provost for Research at Yale University. Dr. Crair obtained his doctoral degree in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, and did postdoctoral training in physics and neuroscience at Kyoto University and Kyoto Prefectural Medical School in Japan and in neuroscience at the University of California, San Francisco. He was a faculty member at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas before coming to Yale as a member of the Department of Neuroscience in 2007. He has directed Yale’s Vision Core Program, the Graduate Program in Neuroscience, was Deputy Chair of the Department of Neuroscience from 2015-2017, then Deputy Dean for Scientific Affairs (Basic Science Departments) at the School of Medicine from 2017-2020 when he became the Vice Provost for Research at Yale University.

Dr. Crair maintains an active research program that develops and employs advanced imaging techniques to examine the basic mechanisms that mediate brain circuit development. He has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of neural activity in the developing brain, for instance by demonstrating that early spontaneous neuronal activity is an essential part of normal brain development. He is currently exploring the mechanisms by which this activity is generated and how it shapes brain circuit development. He has been awarded numerous honors for his research and teaching, including the Esther A. and Joseph Klingenstein Foundation Fellowship Award in the Neurosciences, the Marc Dresden Excellence in Graduate Education Award, and a NARSAD-Sidney R. Baer Jr. Foundation Young Investigator Award. He has also been named an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellow, a John Merck Fund Scholar and the March of Dimes Foundation's Basil O'Connor Fellow.

Appointments

Education & Training

Postdoctoral Researcher
University of California at San Francisco (1997)
Postdoctoral Researcher
Kyoto University and Kyoto Prefectural Medical School (1993)
PhD
University of California at Berkeley (1991)
MA
University of California at Berkeley, Physics (1987)
AB
University of California at Berkeley, Physics (1985)

Research

Overview

Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)

Brain; Cerebral Cortex; Child Development; Nervous System; Neuronal Plasticity; Neurosciences; Synaptic Transmission; Visual Cortex

Research at a Glance

Yale Co-Authors

Frequent collaborators of Michael Crair's published research.

Publications

2024

2023

2022

2021

Get In Touch

Contacts

Academic Office Number
Lab Number
Office Fax Number
Mailing Addresses

Neuroscience

PO Box 208001, 333 Cedar Street

New Haven, CT 06520-8001

United States

Yale University

2 Whitney Avenue, Whitney Grove Square Building

New Haven, CT 06510

United States

Administrative Support

Locations

  • Lab Office

    Academic Office

    Sterling Hall of Medicine, B-Wing

    333 Cedar Street, Ste SHM B-301

    New Haven, CT 06510