Simon E. Fisher (born 1970) is a British geneticist and neuroscientist who has pioneered research into the genetic basis of human speech and language.[1][5][6] He is a director of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and Professor of language and genetics at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour in Nijmegen, The Netherlands.[4][7]
Simon Fisher | |
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Born | Simon E. Fisher 19 August 1970[4] |
Alma mater |
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Awards | Crick Lecture (2008) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | |
Thesis | Positional cloning of the gene responsible for dent's disease (1995) |
Doctoral advisor | Ian W. Craig[2] |
Other academic advisors | Anthony Monaco |
Doctoral students | Sonja Vernes[3] |
Website | www |
Fisher was an undergraduate student at Trinity Hall, Cambridge where he read Natural Sciences. He was a postgraduate student at St. Catherine's College, Oxford[2] where he was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Oxford in 1995 for research on positional cloning of the gene responsible for Dent's disease supervised by Ian W. Craig .[2]
Following his DPhil, he was a postdoctoral researcher in Anthony Monaco's laboratory at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics in Oxford.
Fisher is the co-discoverer of FOXP2, the first gene to be implicated in a human speech and language disorder.[8][9][10] His subsequent research has used FOXP2 and other language-related genes[11] as molecular windows into neural pathways critical for language.[12]
Awards and prizes in recognition of his work include the Francis Crick Lecture in 2008[13] and the inaugural Eric Kandel Young Neuroscientists Prize in 2009.[14][15]