Jeanne Paz, PhD

Jeanne Paz is an senior investigator at Gladstone Institutes. She is also a professor of neurology in the Kavli Institute for Fundamental Neuroscience at UC San Francisco.

Before joining Gladstone, Paz completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University, where she identified seizure control points in the brain. Paz earned her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris. As a graduate student, she studied the role of basal ganglia in regulating absence epilepsy and received an award for the best neuroscience PhD thesis in France.

Paz has an extensive record of editorial, professional, and academic service. She serves on the editorial board of Epilepsy Currents (Sage Journals) and is an editor for Progress in Neurobiology (Elsevier). She’s a member of the NIH Clinical Neuroplasticity and Neurotransmitters (CNNT) study section (2024–2028) and previously served ad hoc on numerous NIH study sections and grant review panels, including for Acute Neural Injury and Epilepsy (ANIE), Department of Defense, National Science Foundation, and CURE Epilepsy.

At UCSF, she contributes to the Physician-Scientist Career Development Program Council Committees and provides mentorship for high school students in the Science and Health Education Program. She also serves on the admissions and placement committee for UCSF’s Summer Research Training Program, mentors post-baccalaureate students in PROPEL, and has been involved in mentoring undergraduate students through PUMAS, as well as postdocs and faculty at Gladstone and UCSF.

In addition, Paz has served on faculty search committees across Neurology, Psychiatry, and Kavli/Physiology, and on the Gladstone Mentoring Task Force. Within UCSF’s neuroscience graduate program, she sits on the executive committee, co-chairs the Formal Neuroscience Seminar Series, served on the admissions committee, and advised first- and second-year students from 2016 to 2023.

Paz also has held leadership roles in the scientific community, including chair of the 2024 Gordon Research Conference on Thalamocortical Interactions, vice-chair of its 2022 meeting in Italy, and chair of the inaugural Vilcek Science Symposium in 2022. She has also contributed to the American Epilepsy Society through the Investigators Workshop committee, membership and fellowship committee, and to the Professional Advisory Board of the Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome Foundation.

At Gladstone, she has served on the Scientific Retreat Committee, further demonstrating her commitment to advancing research and mentorship within and beyond her institution.