The Beckman Center Welcomes Will Allen, Ph.D.

Will Allen, Ph.D., did his undergraduate work at Brown University, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics and biology. After college, he attended the University of Cambridge, where he received a master’s degree in computational biology. He then moved to Stanford for his doctoral training in the Neurosciences program with Karl Deisseroth and Liqun Luo.

As a graduate student, Dr. Allen developed novel tools and approaches for studying brain structure and function at an unprecedently large scale and high resolution. He applied these tools to study the neural basis of thirst, discovering a population of hypothalamic neurons that regulate thirst and mapping how these neurons control brain-wide patterns of activity to produce thirst behavior.

Dr. Allen was subsequently appointed an independent Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard University, where he primarily collaborated with Xiaowei Zhuang. At Harvard, Dr. Allen began mapping the cellular and molecular basis of brain homeostasis and aging, discovering that widespread inflammation of white matter is a major and underappreciated signature of brain aging in mice. To systematically dissect the molecular regulators of key physiological processes such as development and inflammation in mammals, he developed new tools for large-scale in vivo pooled genetic screens with high-dimensional, single-cell phenotypes.

As a faculty member at Stanford, Dr. Allen will continue to develop new tools and approaches to answer basic questions about the mechanisms of tissue growth, homeostasis, and degeneration, focusing on the brain. His lab will study how the mammalian brain establishes and maintains its physiological function, how these can be disrupted with damage or age, and ultimately, how we might repair or rejuvenate the brain. Dr. Allen will join the Department of Developmental Biology in the summer of 2024.