Thirty-one members of the University of Chicago faculty have received distinguished service professorships or named professorships in 2025. Two of our CON trainers, David Freedman and Rong Grace Zhai, are among them.
David Freedman has been named the first Stahl Professor of Neurobiology in the Wallman Society of Fellows and the Department of Neurobiology and the College.
Freedman’s research is aimed at understanding the brain mechanisms of visual perception and cognition. His laboratory records and analyzes the activity of neuronal populations across multiple brain regions to understand how neural circuits mediate visual learning, recognition, and decision making. His group also employs computational modeling and machine learning approaches to understand how neural networks mediate cognitively demanding behaviors.
Freedman is currently the chair of the Department of Neurobiology. He joined the faculty in 2008, and served as chair of the Committee on Computational Neuroscience from 2015-2021. Since 2022, he has also served as a co-lead of The Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI+Science Postdoctoral Fellowship Program at UChicago.
Rong Grace Zhai has been named the Jack Miller Professor for the Study of Neurological Diseases in the Department of Neurology.
Zhai is internationally recognized for her work in Drosophila genetics and human disease modeling that allows her to perform rapid in vivo functional and imaging analyses to understand genetic and biochemical causes of rare and common neurological diseases and discover new therapeutic approaches. She is best known for her work on nicotinamide-nucleotide adenylyl transferase, an enzyme critical for NAD (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide) synthesis and neuroprotection, with implications for mitigating chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy. She has developed Drosophila models for more than a dozen neurological diseases, leading to several therapeutic discoveries, including a patented drug therapy for sorbitol dehydrogenase deficiency now in phase 3 clinical trials. Her research also uncovered the role of spermine synthase in oxidative toxicity linked to Snyder-Robinson Syndrome, along with connections between NAD metabolism and protein homeostasis in neurodegenerative diseases, offering potential therapeutic pathways.
At UChicago, Zhai leads efforts in technology development for the study of the nervous system, partnering with established centers and institutes to establish a disease modeling and drug repurposing and discovery platform within the BSD that will include high resolution imaging, physiology, and biochemical and molecular capability.
Zhai is vice chair for research in the Department of Neurology. She is a Pew Scholar and has won numerous awards including the Snyder-Robinson Foundation Researcher of the Year Award, the Women in Academic Medicine Trailblazer Award, and the Safadi Faculty Scholar Award.
The appointments were effective Jan. 1.
Click here to see the full list of faculty members who received new named, distinguished service professorships in 2025.