Antonio Damasio is University Professor, David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience, Psychology and Philosophy, and Director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

Trained as both neurologist and neuroscientist, Damasio has made seminal contributions to the understanding of brain processes underlying emotions, feelings, and consciousness. His work on the role of affect in decision-making has made a major impact in neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy. He is the author of numerous scientific articles and has been named “Highly Cited Researcher” by the Institute for Scientific Information, and is regarded as one of the most eminent psychologists of the modern era (Google Scholar h-index is 149; over 155,000 citations).

His most recent work addresses the evolutionary development of mind and especially the role of homeostasis in the generation of cultures (his new book on the subject is The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures, to appear in the Fall of 2017).

Damasio is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, and the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. He has received numerous prizes, among them the Grawemeyer Award [2014] and the Honda Prize [2010], the Asturias Prize in Science and Technology [2005], and the Nonino [2003], Signoret [2004] and Pessoa [1992] Prizes.

He holds Honorary Doctorates from several leading Universities, some shared with his wife Hanna, e.g. the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne [EPFL], 2011 and the Sorbonne [Université Paris Descartes], 2015.

Damasio has discussed his research and ideas in several books, among them Descartes’ Error, The Feeling of What Happens, Looking for Spinoza and Self Comes to Mind, which are translated and taught in universities worldwide.