Headshot of Thomasz Nowakowski.

Tomasz Nowakowski

Associate professor of neurological surgery, anatomy and psychiatry and behavioral sciences
University of California, San Francisco

Tomasz Nowakowski is associate professor of neurological surgery, anatomy and psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. He is also a member of the Weill Institute for Neurosciences and the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at the University of California, San Francisco. His independent research laboratory employs scalable technologies to address fundamental questions about the development, structure and function of the brain.

He completed his Ph.D. in the molecular and cellular basis of disease at Edinburgh University, supported by the Wellcome Trust. As a graduate student, he investigated the roles of microRNAs in mammalian brain development. He subsequently completed postdoctoral training at the University of California, San Francisco, where he leveraged emerging single-cell sequencing technologies to identify molecular signatures of progenitor cell subtypes in the human brain.

He is a member of the BRAIN Initiative Cell Atlas Network, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Pediatric Cell Network, the psychENCODE Consortium, SSPsyGene, the Armamentarium consortium and Convergence Neuroscience. He is a recipient of the Cajal Club’s Krieg Cortical Kudos Cortical Explorer Award, the Sontag Foundation’s Distinguished Scientist Award, Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship in Neuroscience Award and the Joseph Altman Award in Developmental Neuroscience. He also received honorable mention for Daniel X. Freedman Prize and was a finalist for the Eppendorf & Science Prize for Neurobiology. He is a New York Stem Cell Foundation Robertson Neuroscience Investigator.

From this contributor

Explore more from The Transmitter

A brain shape outlined in cylindrical dials with multi colored wires stretched between them.

Transforming AI models into useful model organisms

These systems were not built to explain the brain. But treating them as model organisms that we can perturb and evolve will move us closer to that goal.

By Mariya Toneva
22 June 2026 | 6 min read

Cortical area remixes macaques’ knowledge blocks to solve new problems

When monkeys draw complex shapes, their neural activity reflects patterns of activation elicited by drawing simpler, component shapes.

By Lauren Schenkman
19 June 2026 | 0 min watch
Photo illustration of Kaela Singleton.

Getting grants feels good, but giving them is even better

As director of grants management at the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund, Kaela Singleton bets on bold science and shares in the joy of discovery.

By Katie Moisse
19 June 2026 | 8 min read