Affiliation: University of California, San Diego

Dr. Kristan is a Distinguished Professor of Neurobiology at the University of California, San Diego. He received his PhD in Physiology at the University of Pennsylvania in 1969, working with Dr. George Gerstein on correlations among activity patterns of neurons in the sea slug, Aplysia. He then did a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Donald Kennedy at Stanford University, studying control of behaviors in the crayfish. From there he joined the laboratory of Dr. Gunther Stent as a Research Biologist at UC Berkeley, initiating studies on the neuronal basis of swimming in the medicinal leech. Dr. Kristan joined the Biology Department at UC San Diego in 1975 and spent his whole career at UCSD. In addition to his continued studies on leech swimming, he also studied the neuronal circuits for several other leech behaviors (bending, shortening, crawling, feeding) as well as the ways that these behaviors are chosen when activated simultaneously. Along with Dr. Kathleen French, he also characterized the development of leech neurons and their interconnections. His laboratory was among the first to use voltage-sensitive dyes to characterize a neuronal system, showing how leech systems produce the behaviors he studied and how leeched decide which behavior to produce in response to tactile stimuli. Since becoming Emeritus in 2016, Dr. Kristan has expanded his research interests to behavioral control in other leech species and in a planarian flatworm.