JOHN MAUNSELL TO LEAD THE JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
For immediate release.
NEWS RELEASE NR-13-07 (5/11/07). For more information, please call Joe Carey at 202-962-4007
or joe@sfn.org.
JOHN MAUNSELL TO LEAD THE JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
WASHINGTON, DC May 11 - John Maunsell, PhD, a professor of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, has been named the seventh Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Neuroscience, the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience (SfN).
Maunsell will start his five-year term on January 1, 2008. For the last eight years, he has served as a reviewing or senior editor for The Journal, which is published weekly by SfN.
"We are very pleased to have been able to recruit John to serve as editor-in-chief. He is an outstanding neuroscientist with a wealth of experience on the editorial side of science journals. He brings to this position an abiding commitment to excellence and to fairness in the editorial process," said SfN President David Van Essen, PhD. "I would like to acknowledge the enormous contributions of the current Editor-in-Chief, Gary Westbrook. Under Dr. Westbrook's stewardship, the quality and readability of The Journal has been greatly enhanced by the incorporation of many innovations and several new feature sections. I would also like to thank the search committee chaired by Carol Barnes for conducting a thorough, open, and conscientious search process."
Maunsell earned his PhD in biology at the California Institute of Technology in 1982 after completing a BS in zoology with honors at Duke University in 1977. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and held faculty positions at the University of Rochester and Baylor College of Medicine before joining Harvard in 2006. He has been an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1997.
"I am grateful for the confidence placed in me by the SfN Council and the search committee," said Maunsell. "The Journal is one of the most important and prestigious journals in the field of neuroscience. There is something special about a high-quality, non-commercial society journal published by and for working scientists, and I am excited to take on the opportunity and the challenge of enhancing The Journal's considerable strengths."
Maunsell's research focuses on understanding how attention influences the representation of sensory information in the cerebral cortex and how these changes improve behavioral performance. Maunsell's awards include a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral National Research Service Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and a McKnight Foundation Development Award.
The Journal of Neuroscience is the premier journal in its field, publishing in excess of 1,350 peer-reviewed articles and 13,500 pages annually. It covers the gamut of topics in modern neuroscience in the form of cutting-edge research findings and perspectives. SfN, with 36,500 members, is the world's largest organization of basic scientists and clinicians who study the brain and nervous system. Maunsell can be reached at maunsell@hms.harvard.edu.
