Headshot of Thomasz Nowakowski.

Tomasz Nowakowski

Associate professor of neurological surgery, anatomy and psychiatry and behavioral sciences
University of California, San Francisco

Tomasz Nowakowski is associate professor of neurological surgery, anatomy and psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. He is also a member of the Weill Institute for Neurosciences and the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at the University of California, San Francisco. His independent research laboratory employs scalable technologies to address fundamental questions about the development, structure and function of the brain.

He completed his Ph.D. in the molecular and cellular basis of disease at Edinburgh University, supported by the Wellcome Trust. As a graduate student, he investigated the roles of microRNAs in mammalian brain development. He subsequently completed postdoctoral training at the University of California, San Francisco, where he leveraged emerging single-cell sequencing technologies to identify molecular signatures of progenitor cell subtypes in the human brain.

He is a member of the BRAIN Initiative Cell Atlas Network, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Pediatric Cell Network, the psychENCODE Consortium, SSPsyGene, the Armamentarium consortium and Convergence Neuroscience. He is a recipient of the Cajal Club’s Krieg Cortical Kudos Cortical Explorer Award, the Sontag Foundation’s Distinguished Scientist Award, Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship in Neuroscience Award and the Joseph Altman Award in Developmental Neuroscience. He also received honorable mention for Daniel X. Freedman Prize and was a finalist for the Eppendorf & Science Prize for Neurobiology. He is a New York Stem Cell Foundation Robertson Neuroscience Investigator.

From this contributor

Explore more from The Transmitter

A hand moves a square within a set of squares in a consistent gradient, while a hand of lines representing computation passes through.

How to collaborate with AI

To make the best use of LLMs in research, turn your scientific question into a set of concrete, checkable proposals, wire up an automatic scoring loop, and let the AI iterate.

By Kenneth Harris
19 January 2026 | 6 min read
Two heatmap-like mouse silhouettes overlaid with a grid of ones and zeroes.

How artificial agents can help us understand social recognition

Neuroscience is chasing the complexity of social behavior, yet we have not answered the simplest question in the chain: How does a brain know “who is who”? Emerging multi-agent artificial intelligence may help accelerate our understanding of this fundamental computation.

By Eunji Kong
16 January 2026 | 5 min read
Brain network maps creating using lesion network mapping.

Methodological flaw may upend network mapping tool

The lesion network mapping method, used to identify disease-specific brain networks for clinical stimulation, produces a nearly identical network map for any given condition, according to a new study.

By Angie Voyles Askham
15 January 2026 | 7 min read

privacy consent banner

Privacy Preference

We use cookies to provide you with the best online experience. By clicking “Accept All,” you help us understand how our site is used and enhance its performance. You can change your choice at any time. To learn more, please visit our Privacy Policy.