Director

“ZNI is a destination for people who are interested in understanding the complexity of the nervous system, and how research can be used to treat brain diseases. We have an incredible constellation of experts across USC that set the stage for the kind of collaboration that can lead to game-changing innovation.”

Dr. Steve Kay, PhD, DSc
Director, Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute

Dr. Steve Kay, PhD, DSc, is director of the Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute and chair of Physiology & Neuroscience. In addition, he is the founding director of MESH (Medicine, Engineering, Sciences, and Humanities), director of the USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience, and is a Provost Professor of Neurology, Biomedical Engineering and Biological Sciences at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. He held the position as the 21st dean of the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences from 2012 to 2015.

Kay is one of the world’s top experts on the genetics and genomics of circadian rhythms. Having published more than 200 papers, he was named by Thomson Reuters as one of “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” from 2014 to 2017 and has been cited in Science magazine’s “Breakthroughs of the Year” three times since 1997. In 2008, Dr. Kay was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2009 he was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and in 2011 he was awarded the American Society of Plant Biologists’ 2011 Martin Gibbs Medal for his pioneering work in plant sciences. To learn more about the Kay Laboratory and current research visit https://kaylab.usc.edu/.

Kay received his PhD and DSc from the University of Bristol, United Kingdom. Prior to joining USC in 2012, he served as dean of biological sciences at the UC San Diego. He also has held faculty positions at The Rockefeller University, University of Virginia and The Scripps Research Institute, as well as served as the VP of discovery research at the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation, where he focused on using high throughput technologies to push novel development candidates into the Novartis clinical pipeline. Dr. Kay served as president of The Scripps Research Institute from 2015 to 2016. In addition, he has founded several biotechnology companies.