Dr. Kosik is the Harriman Professor of Neuroscience Research and Co-Director of the Neuroscience Research Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Previously, he was full professor in neurology at Harvard Medical School and held appointments at McLean Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital, the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Dr. Kosik has wide-ranging interests in brain physiology, cell fate, synaptic plasticity and neurodegenerative disease. He has pioneered the investigation of tau biology as it relates to neurodevelopment and disease, with particular emphasis on the regulation of tau splicing, translation, aggregation and interactions with RNA. He is also an expert on RNA biology in general, including that of microRNAs, long non-coding RNAs and RNA-protein complexes. He earned his B.A. and M.A. in English literature from Case Western Reserve University and holds an M.D. from the Medical College of Pennsylvania.