Tamas Horvath is named the inaugural Wallace Professor of Biomedical Research

Tamas L. Horvath, recently appointed the inaugural Jean and David W. Wallace Professor of Biomedical Research, focuses his research on neuronal circuitries that support physiological and pathological homeostatic conditions, including processes associated with reproduction, energy metabolism and neurodegeneration.

He is particularly interested in metabolic disorders, such as obesity and diabetes, and the effect of metabolic signals on higher brain functions and neurodegeneration. He studies the role of synaptic plasticity in the mediation of peripheral hormones’ effects on the central nervous system as well as the role of mitochondrial membrane potential in normal and pathological brain functions. His research combines classical neurobiological approaches, including electrophysiology and neuroanatomy, with endocrine and genetic techniques to better understand biological events at the level of the organism.

Horvath is chair of the Section of Comparative Medicine and director of the Yale Program on Integrative Cell Signaling and Neurobiology of Metabolism. He earned a D.V.M. degree from the University of Veterinary Sciences in Budapest, Hungary, before coming to Yale in 1990 as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology (Ob/Gyn). He was named an associate research scientist in the department in 1994 and was appointed an associate professor in 1999 (with joint appointments in the Departments of Ob/Gyn and Neurobiology). He earned his Ph.D. from Attila József University in Hungary in 2000, was named an associate professor with tenure in the Section of Comparative Medicine in 2005, and became a full professor in the section and in the Departments of Neurobiology and Ob/Gyn and Reproductive Sciences in 2006. He became the director of the Yale Program on Cell- and Neurobiology of Energy Metabolism, which he founded, in 2009.

The winner of the National Institutes of Health’s Director’s Pioneer Award in 2010, Horvath has also been a finalist for the New York Academy of Sciences’ Blavatnik Award. In 2008, he was honored with an Alexander von Humboldt Professorship by the Republic of Germany’s Ministry of Science. He serves on the editorial board of Human Ontogenetics, among numerous other professional activities.

The Jean and David W. Wallace Professorship was established in August 2010 by David W. (Class of 1948) and Jean Wallace. The professorship supports the academic, research and teaching activities of a full-time member of the faculty whose work advances the strategic vision of the medical school and who is recognized among the most promising and productive members of its faculty.