Jeffrey Conn's Biography

Jeffrey Conn, Director, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine

Dr. Conn is the Lee E. Limbird Professor of Pharmacology at Vanderbilt University and Director of the Vanderbilt Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery. He received the Ph.D. degree from Vanderbilt in 1986 and pursued postdoctoral studies at Yale University before joining the faculty at Emory University in 1988. Dr. Conn served as head of the Department of Neuroscience at Merck and Company (West Point, PA) from 2000 – 2003 then moved to Vanderbilt University as the founding director of the Vanderbilt Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery, where he has advanced multiple drug candidates into development for neurological and psychiatric indications. Dr. Conn served as Editor in Chief of Molecular Pharmacology, on editorial boards of multiple other journals, and Scientific Advisory Boards of multiple foundations and companies. He has received numerous awards for his translational research. Dr. Conn’s research is focused on understanding the pathophysiology changes that contribute to serious brain disorders, including Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia, depression, and others, and using this understanding to develop novel therapeutic strategies for treatment of these devastating disorders.