Robert Desimone

Robert Desimone is director of the McGovern Institute and the Doris and Don Berkey Professor in MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. He is interested in how the brain deals with the challenge of information overload. By studying the visual system of humans and animals, Desimone has shown that relevant information is selectively amplified in certain brain regions, while irrelevant information is suppressed. Before coming to MIT, he was director of the Intramural Research Program at the National Institutes of Mental Health. He has received numerous awards, including the Troland Prize and the Golden Brain Award. He earned a PhD from Princeton University.