Mriganka Sur

For the Indian politician, see Mriganka Mohan Sur.

Mriganka Sur
Born	1953 (age 72–73) Fatehgarh, India
Occupation	Neuroscientist
Academic background
Education	IIT Kanpur (B.Tech.) Vanderbilt University (M.Eng.), (Eng.D.)
Academic work
Institutions	Massachusetts Institute of Technology Yale University
Website	www.surlab.org

Mriganka Sur (born 1953 in Fatehgarh, India) is an Indian-American neuroscientist known for his contributions to understanding the development, organization, plasticity and computational function of the cerebral cortex. He is the Newton Professor of Neuroscience and Director of the Simons Center for the Social Brain at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also served as a visiting faculty member in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and N.R. Narayana Murthy Distinguished Chair in Computational Brain Research at the Centre for Computational Brain Research, IIT Madras. He was on the Life Sciences jury for the Infosys Prize in 2010 and has been serving as jury chair from 2018.

Early Life and Education

Mriganka Sur did his early schooling at the St. Joseph's Collegiate School, Allahabad. He received the Bachelor of Technology degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur (IIT Kanpur) in 1974, and the Master of Science and PhD degrees in electrical engineering in 1975 and 1978, respectively, from Vanderbilt University in Nashville. After postdoctoral research at Stony Brook University, he was appointed to the faculty of Yale University School of Medicine in 1983.

Career

Mriganka Sur joined the faculty of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1986. He was named in 1993 Professor of Neuroscience and, in 1997, Head of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. He is currently the Newton Professor of Neuroscience and Director of the Simons Center for the Social Brain at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Sur is a pioneer in technology development for analyzing the function and structure of neurons and synapses in the live brain, and the study of brain plasticity and its mechanisms. His laboratory uses experimental and computational approaches to study developmental plasticity and dynamic changes in mature cortical networks during information processing and learning.

His laboratory investigates fundamental principles governing how networks of the cerebral cortex are wired during development and dynamically reorganized during learning, and how cortical circuits process information underlying perception, cognition, and goal-directed action.

Awards and Honors

Mriganka Sur has received numerous honors, including election as a Fellow of the Royal Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.