Dr. Mu-ming Poo was born in China, received his B.S. in physics from Tsinghua University in Taiwan (1970), and Ph.D in biophysics from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore (1974). Following postdoctoral training at Purdue University, he was appointed as Assistant Professor in Physiology at the University of California, Irvine in 1976, promoted to Associate Professor in 1979 and Professor in 1983. In 1985, he moved to Yale University School of Medicine, where he served as Research Professor in Molecular Neurobiology. During 1988-95, he was Professor of Biological Sciences at Columbia University. During 1995-2000, he held the Stephen W. Kuffler Chair in Neurobiology at University of California at San Diego and in 2000, he moved to the University of California, Berkeley. He was the Paul Licht Distinguished Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology in 2006-2013 and the head of the neurobiology division in 2001-2006. Since 1999, he has served as the founding Director of the Institute of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Head of the Laboratory of Neural Plasticity. He is the member of Chinese Academy of Science, US National Academy of Sciences and Academia Sinica (foreign member). He became the chief scientist of the 973 project “Neural Basis of the human intelligence” from Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology in 2011 and the chief scientific consultant of the Strategic Priority Research Project (Class B) on Mapping of Brain Function from Chinese Academy of Science in 2012. In 2014, he was appointed as the director of the CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science.

Dr. Poo’s Research Interests focus on cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying axon guidance, synaptogenesis and synaptic plasticity. He has received the following honors: AAAS Fellow (2001), Ameritec Prize (2001), Ray Wu Society Award (2002), Docteur Honoris Causa of Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris (2003), National Prize for International Cooperation of China (2005), Qiushi Excellent Scientist Award (2010), Outstanding Science and Technology Achievement Prize of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Research Group, 2011) and Honorary Doctoral Degree from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (2014).