Rui Costa is President and CEO of The Allen Institute. He performed his PhD studies with Dr. Alcino Silva at UCLA and postdoctoral work with Dr. Miguel Nicolelis at Duke University. He became section chief at the NIH in 2006, investigator of the Champalimaud Neuroscience Program in 2009, and professor at Columbia University in 2016. He was co-director of Champalimaud Research and director/CEO of the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University.
His laboratory develops and uses genetic, electrophysiological, optical, and behavioral approaches to investigate the neurobiology of action in health and disease. He uncovered that direct and indirect striatal pathways are concurrently active during movement initiation, that this activity is action-specific, and needed for proper movement — challenging the classical “go/no-go” model of basal ganglia function. He also demonstrated dopaminergic neuron heterogeneity by showing that a subpopulation is active before movement, and critical for initiating and invigorating future movement. These findings have implications for movement disorders like Parkinson’s disease. He has received several awards such as the Ariëns Kappers Medal from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Young Investigator Award from SFN and is an elected member of EMBO and the National Academy of Medicine.
