Bio:

Story Landis received her undergraduate degree from Wellesley College and her Ph.D. from Harvard University. After postdoctoral work at Harvard University, she served on the faculty of the Department of Neurobiology there. In 1985, she joined the faculty of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, where she created the Department of Neurosciences that, under her leadership, achieved an international reputation for excellence. Dr. Landis joined the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in 1995 as Scientific Director and worked to re-engineer the Institute’s intramural research program and fostered the growth of a trans-NIH neuroscience community that led to the construction of the Porter Neuroscience Building on the NIH campus. From 2003 to 2014, Dr. Landis served as the Director of NINDS, overseeing an annual budget of $1.6 billion that supported research by investigators in its intramural program and public and private institutions across the country.

Together with NIMH and NIA directors, she co-chaired the NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research, a roadmap-like effort to support trans-NIH activities in the brain sciences. In 2013 and 2014, she and Dr. Tom Insel played a key role in launching the NIH BRAIN Initiative. Throughout her research career, Dr. Landis made fundamental contributions to the understanding of how functionally appropriate synapses form during development and the role of neurotrophins in peripheral nervous system. She is an elected fellow of the Institute of Medicine, the Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and in 2002 was elected President of the Society for Neuroscience.