Eric J. Nestler is Nash Family Professor of Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where he also serves as director of the Friedman Brain Institute, dean of academic affairs and chief scientific officer.
He received his B.A., Ph.D. and M.D. degrees, and psychiatry residency training, from Yale University. He served on the Yale faculty from 1987 to 2000, where he was Elizabeth Mears and House Jameson Professor of Psychiatry, Pharmacology and Neurobiology, and director of the Division of Molecular Psychiatry. He moved to Dallas in 2000, where he was Lou and Ellen McGinley Distinguished Professor and chair of the psychiatry department at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center until moving to New York in 2008.
Nestler is a member of National Academy of Medicine (1998) and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2005). He is a past president of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (2011) and the Society for Neuroscience (2017). He is a founder of and scientific advisory board chair for PsychoGenics, and he chairs the Depression Task Force of the Hope for Depression Research Foundation.
As the author of more than 750 publications and 5 books, Nestler’s research goal is to better understand the molecular basis of drug addiction and depression. His research uses animal models of these conditions to identify the ways in which drugs of misuse or stress change the brain to lead to addiction- or depression-like syndromes, and to use this information to develop improved treatments of these conditions.
