John Hildebrand is Regents Professor of Neuroscience and Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, and Molecular & Cellular Biology at the University of Arizona in Tucson. He earned his baccalaureate degree at Harvard University in 1964 and his Ph.D. at the Rockefeller University in 1969 and moved to the University of Arizona in 1985 after 16 years on the faculties of Harvard and Columbia Universities. He was the founding head of the University’s Division of Neurobiology (1985-2009) and of the Department of Neuroscience after the Division became a Department (2009-2013). He also was a founder of the Center for Insect Science (1988) and School of Mind, Brain and Behavior (2009). He is an author of more than 215 research papers and reviews, editor of five books, and recipient of numerous national and international honors and awards. Among his strongest interests is education at all levels. For example, he served the International Brain Research Organization (IBRO) as chair (1992-98) of its Committee on Developing Countries and chair (2001-10) of its Board of Neuroscience Schools, advocating for and teaching in intensive schools in South America and Southern Europe. A past president of the Association for Chemoreception Sciences, International Society of Chemical Ecology, and International Society for Neuroethology, he currently is the elected Foreign Secretary of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Philosophical Society, German National Academy of Sciences 'Leopoldina’, Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, and Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters; an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society (UK); and a fellow of the AAAS, the Entomological Society of America, and the International Society for Neuroethology. For many years he had two parallel careers: as an academic scientist and as a musician.
Research interests: Neurobiology, neuroethology, and chemical ecology of insects and other arthropods, especially: functional organization and neurophysiology of the olfactory system; behavior, particularly interactions with mates and plant and animal hosts; biology of arthropod vectors of disease, mainly triatomine vectors of Chagas Disease; and postembryonic, metamorphic development of the central nervous system.