John H. Byrne

John H. Byrne
Byrne in 2019
Born	1946 (1946)
Nationality	American
Alma mater	New York University Tandon School of Engineering
Scientific career
Fields	Neuroscience
Thesis	Receptive Fields and Response Properties of Aplysia Mechanoreceptor Neurons (1973)
Doctoral advisor	Eric Kandel
Doctoral students	Dean Buonomano,

John H. "Jack" Byrne (born 1946) is an American neuroscientist, is the Virgil and June Waggoner Chair of Neurobiology and Anatomy^[1] at McGovern Medical School in Houston, Texas.

Early Life[]

John Byrne grew up in Freeport, Long Island, a small town about 30 miles east of New York City.  At an early age, he developed an interest in electronics and became an FCC-licensed amateur radio operator while attending Freeport High School.  He later received an FCC commercial radiotelephone license while working toward his bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering. During his college years, he held several part-time jobs including marine radio installation and maintenance for American Hydrofoil Lines, electronic technician in the analog computer lab at the US Naval Training Device Center in Sands Point, NY, technician in the Medical Physics Department at Memorial Hospital, New York City, technician working on respiratory function computers at Instrumentation Associates in New Your City, and electronic technician in the laboratory of Dr. Eric Kandel at NYU Medical School. After receiving his BS degree, he worked on bioinstrumentation for the Lunar Excursion Module at Grumman Aircraft Company.  

Career[]

After completing his Ph.D. at NYU, and a post-doctoral fellowship at Columbia, Byrne joined the faculty at the Department of Physiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, where he investigated the ink motor reflex of Aplysia. In 1982, Byrne moved to Houston for a faculty position in the Department of Physiology and Cell Biology at McGovern Medical School of The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth). Byrne served as professor and chair of the Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy at McGovern Medical School from 1987 to 2017. He is currently the director of the UTHealth Neuroscience Research Center.

Research[]

Byrne’s research interests over the past 40 years have focused on elucidating the neural and molecular mechanisms of memory by exploiting the technical advantages of the marine mollusc Aplysia. This animal exhibits a number of ubiquitous forms of learning such as classical conditioning and operant conditioning and has a simple nervous system with relatively large identified neurons, which facilitates the analyses.  His lab uses an interdisciplinary approach that ranges from behavioral to molecular levels, including computational modeling and attempts to relate higher-level phenomena to lower-level mechanisms.

Teaching[]

In collaboration with faculty in the Department of Neurobiology & Anatomy, Byrne et al., developed and launched Neuroscience Online: an Electronic Textbook for the Neurosciences, an Open-Access Electronic Textbook for the study of neuroscience. As a complement to Neuroscience Online, Byrne with the department of Neurobiology & Anatomy launched Neuroanatomy Online: an open-access electronic laboratory for the neurosciences.

John Byrne is the editor-in-chief for the Cold Spring Harbor Press journal Learning & Memory.^[2]

Honors, awards, and memberships[]

• Elected Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science^[3]
• The University of Texas System Regent's Teaching Award^[4]
• International Neural Network Society Hebb Award^[5]
• Dana Foundation^[6]
• Society for Neuroscience^[7]
• NIH Study Section on Learning, Memory and Decision Neuroscience^[8]

References[]