Charan Ranganath is Director of the Memory and Plasticity Program and a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of California at Davis. He has been a pioneer in the use of brain imaging techniques like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the mechanisms in the brain that allow us to remember past events, also known as “episodic memory.”
Dr. Ranganath’s lab is investigating how memory is affected by emotion, stress, and curiosity; how memory changes with healthy aging; how memory is affected by disorders such as epilepsy, stroke, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer’s disease; and is developing innovative new approaches to improve artificial intelligence, education, and to enhance episodic memory in healthy people and in those suffering from memory disorders.
Dr. Ranganath has received many awards, including the Samuel Sutton Award for Distinguished Scientific Contribution to Human ERPs and Cognition, the Young Investigator Award from the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, and a Guggenheim fellowship. He has also served on several review panels for the National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, and the National Science Foundation.