Scott Marek

Assistant professor of radiology
Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis

Scott Marek is assistant professor of radiology in the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Marek received a Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of Pittsburgh, where he gained expertise in pediatric neuroimaging with Beatriz Luna. Subsequently, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Nico Dosenbach at Washington University School of Medicine, where he gained expertise in functional mapping of individual brains and leveraging big data to quantify the reproducibility of brain-wide association studies. He now runs his own lab focused on precision imaging and deep phenotyping of adolescent twins with depression, as well as population neuroscience approaches using large datasets, such as the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study.

From this contributor

Explore more from The Transmitter

Illustration of two cats jumping to opposite buildings in a city.

Is confidence a second thought—or part of the first one?

In some settings, neural circuits may calculate confidence in a decision simultaneously with the choice itself. That changes the types of questions researchers should ask.

By Ariel Zylberberg
5 October 2026 | 6 min read
Illustration of a plate with a cherry in front of a computer server.

What AI can learn from hunger

To enhance AI safety, take a lesson from biological brains; a small set of wants maintains durable control over a much larger cognitive system.

By Anthony Zador
5 October 2026 | 6 min read

New projectome captures ‘complex beast’ of serotonin system in mice

The whole-brain map—the first of its kind in a vertebrate—identifies five distinct neuron groups.

By Madeline Shaw
2 October 2026 | 0 min watch