Headshot of Anthony Zador.

Anthony Zador

Professor of biology, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory;
Contributing editor, The Transmitter

Anthony Zador is Alle Davis Harris Professor of Biology at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. The goal of his research is to understand the neural circuits underlying sensorimotor decision-making. His laboratory pioneered the use of rodents in complex decision-making tasks and developed a novel suite of approaches, including MAPseq and BARseq, for determining brain wiring using high-throughput DNA sequencing. His current research interests include neuroscience-inspired artificial intelligence. He is the co-founder of several meetings, including Computational and Systems Neuroscience and From Neuroscience to Artificially Intelligent Systems.

Zador received his M.D. and Ph.D. from Yale University and did postdoctoral work at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, before joining the faculty at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Explore more from The Transmitter

Illustration of a laptop computer superimposed over a scroll.

‘Friction-maxxing’ in school: Students should read primary literature, not AI summaries

Trainees need to learn how to identify a neuroscience paper’s major takeaways and integrate them into their understanding. This skill doesn’t come from outsourcing the work to large language models.

By Nora Bradford
26 March 2026 | 5 min read

Head direction cells stably orient mice to outside world

The cells’ representations show little drift over time—unlike those of other navigation system neurons—and may provide a “rigid backbone” for more flexible sensory and cognitive responses.

By Angie Voyles Askham
25 March 2026 | 0 min watch

Juan Gallego discusses how manifolds are transforming our understanding of the coordination of neuronal population activity

A wealth of evidence supports the view that neural manifolds are real and useful, Gallego says, even if they may not completely solve the age-old mind-body problem.

By Paul Middlebrooks
25 March 2026 | 121 min listen