Kafui Dzirasa

Dr. Kafui Dzirasa is the first African American to complete a PhD in Neurobiology at Duke University. His research interests focus on understanding how changes in the brain produce neurological and mental illness. Kafui obtained an MD from the Duke University School of Medicine in 2009 and completed residency training in General Psychiatry in 2016.

He was awarded the One Mind Rising Star Award, and his laboratory was featured on CBS 60 Minutes in 2011. He has been awarded the International Mental Health Research Organization Rising Star Award, the Sydney Baer Prize for Schizophrenia Research. In 2017, he was recognized as 40 under 40 in Health by the National Minority Quality Forum, and the Engineering Alumni of the Year from UMBC. Kafui was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers: the nation’s highest award for scientists and engineers in the early stages of their independent research careers in 2016.

In 2019, Kafui was awarded the Alan Leshner Public Engagement Fellowship from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Society for Neuroscience Young Investigator award given to the best young brain scientist in the world. Kafui has served as an Associate Scientific Advisor for the journal Science Translational Medicine, and he was a member of the 17-member Next Generation Research Initiative mandated by Congress. He has also served on the Editorial Advisory Board for TEDMED, and the Advisory committee for the NIH Director for the BRAIN Initiative. Kafui is the K. Ranga Rama Krishnan endowed associate Professor at Duke University with appointments in the Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Neurobiology, Biomedical Engineering, and Neurosurgery.