Huda Y.
Zoghbi

Huda Zoghbi is clinician-scientist who studies the molecular mechanisms of neurodevelopment and neurodegeneration. She was born in Lebanon and attended the American University of Beirut until 1976, when civil war broke out. She moved to the United States to continue medical school.

Zoghbi graduated from Meharry Medical College in Nashville in 1979. She completed her training in pediatric neurology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and then joined the laboratory of Art Beaudet for a postdoctoral fellowship in molecular genetics. In 1985, she established her own research laboratory focused on identifying the genes and mechanisms underlying brain development and degeneration.

Today, Zoghbi is Professor of Molecular and Human Genetics and of Pediatrics at Baylor, Director of the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children’s Hospital, and a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator.

She has received numerous other honors and awards, including the Vilcek Prize for Biomedical Research (2009), Gruber Prize in Neuroscience (2011), Breakthrough Prize in Life Science (2017) and the Brain Prize (2020). She is an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Inventors. She also holds the National Order of the Cedar, Lebanon.