Solving the mysteries of bioscience
Foundational Science Fuels Breakthroughs
Inspiring Next-Generation Scientists
Bio:
John J. Ngai, Ph.D., is the Director of the NIH’s Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN®) Initiative, where he oversees the long-term strategy and day-to-day operations of this ground-breaking enterprise. Dr. Ngai earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry and biology from Pomona College, Claremont, California, and Ph.D. in biology from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena. He was a postdoctoral researcher at Caltech and at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons before starting his faculty position at the University of California at Berkeley. During more than 25 years as a UC Berkeley faculty member, Dr. Ngai has trained 20 undergraduate students, 24 graduate students and 15 postdoctoral fellows in addition to teaching well over 1,000 students in the classroom. His work has led to the publication of more than 70 scientific articles in some of the field’s most prestigious journals and 10 U.S. and international patents. Dr. Ngai has received many awards including from the Sloan Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts, and McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience. As a faculty member, Dr. Ngai has served as the director of Berkeley’s Neuroscience Graduate Program and Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute. He has also provided extensive service on NIH study sections, councils and steering groups, including as previous co-chair of the NIH BRAIN® Initiative Cell Census Consortium Steering Group.
Cell
May 29, 2025
Yoav Ben-Simon, Marcus Hooper, Sujatha Narayan, Tanya L. Daigle, Deepanjali Dwivedi, Sharon W. Way, Aaron Oster, David A. Stafford, John K. Mich, Michael J. Taormina, Refugio A. Martinez, Ximena Opitz-Araya, Jada R. Roth, Jason R. Alexander, Shona Allen, Adam Amster, Joel Arbuckle, Angela Ayala, Pamela M. Baker, Trygve E. Bakken, Tyler Barcelli, Stuard Barta, Jacqueline Bendrick, Darren Bertagnolli, Cameron Bielstein, Prajal Bishwakarma, Jessica Bowlus, Gabriella Boyer, Krissy Brouner, Brittny Casian, Tamara Casper, Anish B. Chakka, Rushil Chakrabarty, Rebecca K. Chance, Sakshi Chavan, Michael Clark, Kaity Colbert, Forrest Collman, Scott Daniel, Maxwell Departee, Peter DiValentin, Nicholas Donadio, Nadezhda Dotson, Tom Egdorf, Tim Fliss, Mariano Gabitto, Jazmin Garcia, Amanda Gary, Molly Gasperini, Jessica Gloe, Jeff Goldy, Bryan B. Gore, Lucas Graybuck, Noah Greisman, Francoise Haeseleer, Carliana Halterman, Zeb Haradon, Samantha D. Hastings, Olivia Helback, Windy Ho, Dirk Hockemeyer, Cindy Huang, Sydney Huff, Avery Hunker, Nelson Johansen, Danielle Jones, Zoe Juneau, Brian Kalmbach, Madhav Kannan, Shannon Khem, Emily Kussick, Rana Kutsal, Rachael Larsen, Changkyu Lee, Angus Y. Lee, Madison Leibly, Garreck H. Lenz, Su Li, Elizabeth Liang, Nicholas Lusk, Zachary Madigan, Jessica Malloy, Jocelin Malone, Rachel McCue, Jose Melchor, Tyler Mollenkopf, Skyler Moosman, Elyse Morin, Dakota Newman, Lydia Ng, Kiet Ngo, Victoria Omstead, Sven Otto, Alana Oyama, Nick Pena, Trangthanh Pham, Elliot Phillips, Christina A. Pom, Lydia Potekhina, Shea Ransford, Patrick L. Ray, Dean Rette, Cade Reynoldson, Christine Rimorin, Dana Rocha, Augustin Ruiz, Raymond E. A. Sanchez, Lane Sawyer, Adriana Sedeno-Cortes, Joshua P. Sevigny, Nadiya Shapovalova, Noah Shepard, Lyudmila Shulga, Ana R. Sigler, La'Akea Siverts, Sherif Soliman, Saroja Somasundaram, Brian Staats, Kaiya Stewart, Eric Szelenyi, Michael Tieu, Cameron Trader, Alex Tran, Cindy T. J. van Velthoven, Miranda Walker, Yimin Wang, Natalie Weed, Morgan Wirthlin, Toren Wood, Brooke Wynalda, Zizhen Yao, Thomas Zhou, Jeanelle Ariza, Nick Dee, Melissa Reding, Kara Ronellenfitch, Shoaib Mufti, Susan M. Sunkin, Kimberly A. Smith, Luke Esposito, Jack Waters, Bargavi Thyagarajan, Shenqin Yao, Ed S. Lein, Hongkui Zeng, Boaz P. Levi, John Ngai, Jonathan T. Ting, Bosiljka Tasic
Nature
Oct 01, 2021
Zizhen Yao, Hanqing Liu, Fangming Xie, Stephan Fischer, Ricky S. Adkins, Andrew I. Aldridge, Seth A. Ament, Anna Bartlett, M. Margarita Behrens, Koen Van den Berge, Darren Bertagnolli, Hector Roux de Bézieux, Tommaso Biancalani, A. Sina Booeshaghi, Héctor Corrada Bravo, Tamara Casper, Carlo Colantuoni, Jonathan Crabtree, Heather Creasy, Kirsten Crichton, Megan Crow, Nick Dee, Elizabeth L. Dougherty, Wayne I. Doyle, Sandrine Dudoit, Rongxin Fang, Victor Felix, Olivia Fong, Michelle Giglio, Jeff Goldy, Mike Hawrylycz, Brian R. Herb, Ronna Hertzano, Xiaomeng Hou, Qiwen Hu, Jayaram Kancherla, Matthew Kroll, Kanan Lathia, Yang Eric Li, Jacinta D. Lucero, Chongyuan Luo, Anup Mahurkar, Delissa McMillen, Naeem M. Nadaf, Joseph R. Nery, Thuc Nghi Nguyen, Sheng-Yong Niu, Vasilis Ntranos, Joshua Orvis, Julia K. Osteen, Thanh Pham, Antonio Pinto-Duarte, Olivier Poirion, Sebastian Preissl, Elizabeth Purdom, Christine Rimorin, Davide Risso, Angeline C. Rivkin, Kimberly Smith, Kelly Street, Josef Sulc, Valentine Svensson, Michael Tieu, Amy Torkelson, Herman Tung, Eeshit Dhaval Vaishnav, Charles R. Vanderburg, Cindy van Velthoven, Xinxin Wang, Owen R. White, Z. Josh Huang, Peter V. Kharchenko, Lior Pachter, John Ngai, Aviv Regev, Bosiljka Tasic, Joshua D. Welch, Jesse Gillis, Evan Z. Macosko, Bing Ren, Joseph R. Ecker, Hongkui Zeng, Eran A. Mukamel
BRAIN Initiative Cell Census Network (BICCN)
Neuron
Nov 01, 2017
Joseph R. Ecker, Daniel H. Geschwind, Arnold R. Kriegstein, John Ngai, Pavel Osten, Damon Polioudakis, Aviv Regev, Nenad Sestan, Ian R. Wickersham, Hongkui Zeng