Prof. Kaczmarek plays guitar in several music groups, including the: “Cellmates” a Yale-based rock band, specializing in the “bio-rock” genre, as well as in two jazz ensembles.
Len Kaczmarek is a Professor of Pharmacology and Cellular and Molecular Physiology at Yale University School of Medicine. He carried out his undergraduate and graduate work at the University of London and carried out research at the University of California at Los Angeles, the Free University of Brussels, Belgium and the California Institute of Technology before joining the Yale faculty in 1981.He served as Chairman of the Yale Department of Pharmacology from 1989 to 1998. Professor Kaczmarek’s laboratory studies the biochemical changes that occur within neurons to produce prolonged changes in the behavior of an animal. In particular, his group discovered the genes for many of the ion channel proteins that are directly responsible for the electrical excitability of nerve cells. He is currently investigating the way mutations in these proteins in humans are responsible for several forms of intellectual disability and autism. Prof. Kaczmarek has authored or edited several books, and is co-author of the textbook The Neuron.