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Dr.

Alan D. Grinnell

University of California, Los Angeles
Area
Biological Sciences
Specialty
Neurosciences
Elected
2025

Alan Grinnell is Distinguished Professor of integrative biology and physiology at UCLA. He is a member of the Brain Research Institute at the David Geffen School of Medicine and previously served as Director of the Jerry Lewis Neuromuscular Research Center, Chair of Integrative Biology and Physiology, and Associate Dean of Life Sciences.

Grinnell is an authority on bats and their use of echolocation — the process by which they emit high-frequency sounds and listen for return echoes to orient themselves in their environment and hunt for prey — as a substitute for vision. Much of his research has focused on mapping precisely how bats’ brains and nervous systems process this auditory information, and his findings have helped inspire advances in fields like sonar, robotics and medical imaging.

In addition to his work in animal behavior and sensory biology, Grinnell has had a long-standing interest in the art of the ancient Americas and is the author of “Painting the Cosmos: Art and Iconography of the Ceramics of Ancient Panama.” Grinnell holds a Ph.D. in Biology from Harvard University.

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