Gord Fishell is a developmental neurobiologist interested in how the architecture of brain circuits are assembled, with a special focus on the diverse populations of inhibitory interneurons that are found in both pallial and subpallial telencephalon. His lab identified that the origins of these cells are generated from two specialized embryonic structures of the subpallium, the medial and caudal ganglionic eminences. In addition, his laboratory was central in identifying both the extrinsic signals that pattern these regions, as well as discovering a swath of intrinsic transcriptional signals that form a signaling cascade for the specification of specific interneuron subtypes. The current focus is to explain how a common set of interneurons can integrate into a wide variety of brain structures with distinctly different organizations and functions, and to explore the relationship between developmental gene expression in GABAergic and cholinergic populations and risk genes for neurodevelopmental disorders including ASD.

Fishell is a professor of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School and a group leader at the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He was previously the associate director of the New York University (NYU) Neuroscience Institute, Julius Raines Professor of Neuroscience and Physiology, and director of the graduate program in neuroscience and physiology at the NYU School of Medicine.