Spyros Artavanis-Tsakonas, Ph.D.

Spyros Artavanis-Tsakonas, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of Cell Biology but continues to maintain a research group. He received his doctoral degree at Cambridge University, England and pursued postdoctoral research at the University of Basel, Switzerland, and Stanford University. He has been a faculty member at Harvard Medical School's Cell Biology department since 1998, and was Chief Scientific Officer at Biogen from 2012 until 2016.

Using molecular and genetic approaches, the Artavanis-Tsakonas lab is examining how various signals are integrated in undifferentiated cells in order to dictate cell fates. Our main experimental system is Drosophila and are interested in exploiting this system as a tool to explore human biology and understand the underlying mechanisms of pathologies with the current focus on neurodegeneration.