Will Talbot

Professor of developmental biology
Stanford University

Will Talbot is professor of developmental biology at Stanford University. His research focuses on the development and function of glial cells in the vertebrate nervous system. He completed his Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1993 at Stanford University. As a graduate student with David Hogness at Stanford, Talbot investigated the genetic control of metamorphosis in Drosophila. As a postdoctoral fellow working with Charles Kimmel and John Postlethwait at the University of Oregon, he conducted molecular studies of genes that regulate early development in the zebrafish. Talbot became assistant professor at the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine at New York University Medical Center in 1996, and in 1999, he joined the faculty at Stanford. He has received a Pew Scholars Award, a Rita Allen Foundation Scholars Award, and he was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

 

Explore more from The Transmitter

Are computational complexity principles relevant for explaining brain activity?

Cristopher Moore discusses the nature of computation and whether we should think of neural activity as computing.

By Paul Middlebrooks
17 June 2026 | 1 min read
Illustration of cells converting from fibroblasts to myoblasts.

This paper changed my life: Learning the molecular rules of cell identity

A 1987 Cell paper showed that a single transcription factor could turn fibroblasts into muscle cells. The work inspired Ardem Patapoutian to think about the molecular codes that define neuronal subtypes.

By Ardem Patapoutian
17 June 2026 | 6 min read

Leucovorin saga, and more

Here is a roundup of autism-related news and research spotted around the web for the week of 15 June.

By Jill Adams
16 June 2026 | 2 min read