Dr. Joe Z. Tsien is an Eminent Scholar of the Georgia Research Alliance and Professor of Neurobiology and Co-Director of the Brain Discovery Institute at the Medical College of Georgia. A native of China, he received his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from the University of Minnesota. Prior to the Medical College of Georgia which he joined in 2007, he was Assistant Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University, and Professor and Director of the Center for Systems Neurobiology at Boston University.

Dr. Tsien has been a leader in elucidating the molecular and neural network mechanisms underlying learning and memory. He pioneered the Cre/loxP-mediated conditional gene knockout technology which is now widely used in many laboratories around the world, and genetically engineered transgenic NR2B mice for testing the Hebb's rule, more widely known to the lay public as the smart mouse Doogie which was selected as one of the top ten major scientific breakthroughs by Science magazine in 1999. He is a pioneer in the development of a series of region- and temporal-specific gene or protein knockout techniques, and his many contributions over the past decade have laid the groundwork for a much more sophisticated understanding of the mechanisms by which memories are acquired, consolidated, and stored in the brain. He is also the first to discover the relationship between Alzheimer's diseases, adult neurogenesis, and memory function. His laboratory continues to conduct cutting edge research on the molecular and neural mechanism of memory functions and dysfunctions.