Wendy A. Suzuki, PhD, is a Professor of Neural Science and Psychology in the Center for Neural Science at New York University.

She received her undergraduate degree in physiology and human anatomy at the University of California, Berkeley in 1987 studying with Prof. Marian C. Diamond, a leader in the field of brain plasticity. She went on to earn her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from U.C. San Diego in 1993 and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health before accepting her faculty position at New York University in 1998.

Her major research interest continues to be brain plasticity. She is best known for her extensive work studying areas in the brain critical for our ability to form and retain new long-term memories. More recently her work has focused on understanding how aerobic exercise can be used to improve learning, memory and higher cognitive abilities in humans. Wendy is passionate about teaching (see her courses), about exercise (intenSati), and about supporting and mentoring up and coming scientists. See more on Wendy's website.

Wendy's TEDx Talk (#2 most popular talk in 2018)
Wendy's books:

• Healthy Brain, Happy Life
• Good Anxiety

Topics we cover:

1. What was the moment you realized you wanted to become a neuroscientist?
2. What is it like to study something no one has really studied before?
3. What is something you wish somebody told you before you started graduate school?
4. How do you see your work in science as being creative?
5. What was it like to start your own lab? What do you wish you had known?
6. How has your leadership style evolved? (What works better now than what you had been trying)
7. How did you choose your research areas, after grad school?
8. What challenges did you face as you made a research switch (from neurophysiology to exercise)
9. How does meditation make you a better scientist?
10. What made you want to get involved in activities that don’t involve lab research (e.g., public speaking, book writing, entrepreneurship)
11. How did you build up your skill of public speaking? And how has public speaking opened doors for you?
12. Wendy’s business: BrainBody, Inc
13. What is one skill, quality, or general factor that has served you no matter where you went in life?

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Music by: Adam Fine