Erik Jorgensen, NAS Fellow

New Fellow at The National Academy of Sciences

When explaining his work, Erik Jorgensen, a geneticist who studies the synapse, can transport you to an almost galactic place—the observable universe of the brain.

“Synapses are contacts between nerve cells in your brain,” says the School of Biological Sciences’ distinguished professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator who May 3, 2022 was elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).

“You have trillions of them. Think of all the stars you can see on a moonless night on Bald Mountain,” he continues, referring to the 11,949-foot peak in the nearby Uinta Mountains. “Multiply that by 100 billion. I will give you a few minutes to do the calculation. …That’s how many synapses you have—the brain can hold and process a lot of information with all of those synapses. The memory of your grandmother lives here, along with cello lessons, the smell of your mother after visiting the hairdresser’s, and eating a raw olive given to you by your brother. It’s a crowded place.” Scientists want to know how synapses work, says Jorgensen, “understand how they change to store a memory, and how they become corrupted when we forget, or why they die as we pass into dementia.” As of 2020, Jorgensen has been a collaborator in the National Science Foundation-funded Neuronex 2 Project, and he knows what it takes to understand these elusive, minute gaps between nerve cells.

His election to the NAS, arguably the most prestigious award of its kind, speaks to the kind of mind-blowing inquiry into neurology for which he’s known. It also validates Jorgensen’s inner galactic allusion to locating where your grandmother suffering from severe dementia lives along with “your childhood friends, embarrassment, fear, love, and hate.”

Fifty U researchers have been elected to the NAS since its inception. In addition to Jorgensen, this year Valeria Molinera, distinguished professor of chemistry, was also elected. More at science.utah.edu