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Eric J. Nestler Ascends: Neuroscience Luminary Enshrined in the National Academy of Sciences

New York, NY – May 2, 2025 — In the ever-thrumming heart of biomedical brilliance, where molecules speak and minds dare to decode their grammar, Dr. Eric J. Nestler has been vaulted into the uppermost echelons of scientific acclaim: the National Academy of Sciences.

At once physician, scholar, and architect of neurobiological insight, Nestler now joins an elite scientific constellation—his name inscribed among those whose work doesn’t merely describe the world, but transforms how we think, treat, and heal. A towering figure at Mount Sinai, Nestler is no mere academic overseer. The Nash Family Professor of Neuroscience, the Interim Dean of the Icahn School of Medicine, and the Chief Scientific Officer of the General Health System are all positions he holds. The pace of his contributions, however, is too rapid for titles alone to convey. His research plumbs the dark, tangled circuitry of addiction and depression—charting, with surgical precision, the molecular choreography that underlies suffering and resilience.

“"The election of Dr According to Dr. Brendan Carr, CEO of Mount Sinai, Nestler is a thunderclap of realisation. “His discoveries ripple far beyond the lab bench—they hold real, transformative promise for people living with devastating neuropsychiatric conditions.”

Seventeen years. That’s how long Nestler has helmed the Friedman Brain Institute, transforming it into a gravitational force that pulls the best minds from across the globe. He has been less a leader than a force multiplier—nurturing innovation, inviting challenge, and building one of the premier translational neuroscience institutes in the world.

Soon to take full command of the Icahn School as Dr. Dennis Charney retires this June, Nestler is poised to push the institution even further into the frontier.

“Eric’s instincts are scientific, but his impact is profoundly human,” Charney reflected. “He sees systems—genetic, institutional, global—and knows how to steer them.”

Nestler’s lab is where the brain’s secrets are unspooled. In his early work, he rewired reward pathways in mice, wielding genetic tools to show—unequivocally—how substance use sculpts the very architecture of behavior. Later, he created a mouse model of depression so precise, so revealing, that it is now a gold standard in psychiatric research. He did more than study the mechanisms of stress—he mapped the very battlefields where vulnerability and resilience clash.

A Yale-trained physician-scientist, Nestler’s curriculum vitae is staggering: 750+ publications, five books, and a ledger of NIH grants long enough to make any research administrator sweat. His accolades—ranging from the Wilbur Cross Medal to the Peter Seeburg Prize—tell the story of a mind that never settles for approximation.

Now, as a new chapter begins, his name joins a powerful cadre of Mount Sinai scientists in the NAS, including visionaries in immunology, microbiology, and precision medicine. The legacy he’s shaping is not merely institutional—it’s generational.