Marla B. Sokolowski
Program
Child and Brain Development
Appointment
Weston Fellow, Program Co-Director
Institution
University of Toronto
Country
Canada 
University Professor Marla B. Sokolowski, BSc (1977, University of Toronto), PhD (1981, University of Toronto), is co-director of the Child & Brain Development Program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research where she is the Weston Fellow. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and Canada Research Chair in Behavioural Neurology in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto. Her innovative work is esteemed worldwide as a clear, integrative mechanistic paragon of the manner in which genes can interact with the environment, thus impacting behaviour. She has trail-blazed the development of a branch of Behaviour Genetics that addresses the genetic and molecular bases of natural individual differences in behaviour and is best known for her discovery of the foraging gene.
She has published well over 135 publications and given close to 200 invited lectures. Prof. Sokolowski is an award winning teacher and highly accomplished lecturer. She has supervised over 20 postdoctoral fellows and 35 graduate students with many of her trainees ascending to prestigious national and international academic positions. She has received Distinguished Visiting Professorships in the US and Europe where she contributes regularly to graduate education. She became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1998 for her pioneering work in the field of Behavioural Genetics and received a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Genetics and Behavioural Neurology in 2001.
In 2004 she became a Fellow of Massey College and in 2007 she received the Genetics Society of Canada’s Award of Excellence. She was the Director of the Life Sciences Division of the Academy of Sciences of the Royal Society of Canada from 2009-2012. She was named a University Professor at University of Toronto in 2010 and accepted the position of Academic Director of the Fraser Mustard Institute for Human Development at University of Toronto in 2012. In 2013 she was awarded the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Medal.
