Andrew Huberman

Andrew Huberman was born on September 26, 1975, and grew up in California. His parents divorced when he was 12, leading him to disengage from academics and pursue skateboarding; he worked at a local skateboard shop and briefly considered firefighting, taking fire science classes at Mission College while in high school. Influenced by therapy, a supportive girlfriend with a strong work ethic, and growing interest in biopsychology, he resumed studies at Foothill College, then earned a B.A. in psychology with honors from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1998. Huberman continued with an M.A. in psychology from UC Berkeley in 2000 and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UC Davis in 2004, receiving the Allan G. Marr Prize for the best dissertation. His postdoctoral work from 2005-2010 at Stanford under Ben Barres included a Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Fellowship (2006-2009), where he developed genetic tools for studying the visual system. He held his first faculty position from 2011-2015 at UC San Diego in Neurosciences and Neurobiology before joining Stanford in 2016 as a tenured professor in neurobiology and ophthalmology. At Stanford, Huberman directs the Huberman Lab, publishing over 75 peer-reviewed articles in journals like Nature, Cell, Science, and Neuron on brain plasticity, vision repair (e.g., glaucoma), stress mechanisms, and neural regeneration. In 2019, he partnered with publicist Robert Mohr amid COVID-19 frustrations with public health messaging, leading to the 2021 launch of the Huberman Lab podcast and co-founding Scicomm Media for science communication. He also co-directs courses like Cold Spring Harbor's 'Vision' platform and authored the upcoming book Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body. Huberman serves as lead scientific advisor for Madefor, applying neuroscience and positive psychology for behavior change, stemming from collaborations like a shark fear study. His work extends to teaching neuroanatomy to Stanford medical students and fellowships from McKnight and Pew Foundations.