Viviana Gradinaru was born in Romania. She immigrated to the United States to study at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), earning a bachelor’s degree in biology, followed by a PhD in neuroscience from Stanford University. She returned to Caltech, where she is now the Lois and Victor Troendle Professor of Neuroscience and Biological Engineering.
Gradinaru’s research has focused on developing technologies for neuroscience that are used to probe circuits underlying locomotion, reward, and sleep, and she has explored the benefits of deep brain stimulation for patients with Parkinson’s disease.
Along with the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science, Gradinaru has received the Blavatnik National Award for Young Scientists and the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, and in 2017 she was the Early-Career Scientist Winner in the Innovators in Science Award in Neuroscience from the New York Academy of Sciences.
Raised in a farming community under a communist regime, Gradinaru says, “My parents believed in the value of education. They created the space … to have basically an undisturbed environment around me for education.” In addition, “my grandma raised me with this concept of Make yourself useful. It’s something that stayed with me throughout my life.”
Gradinaru values diversity in the advancement of science. “What’s special about the United States is that it takes these different backgrounds, and trainings, and possibilities, and puts them together,” she said. “A lot of my students are international. They travel great lengths. They live here without any family support, and they’re dedicating their time and energy to science. I hope they see ... that scientists — immigrant scientists — are valued and seen and appreciated.”
