David Eagleman

David Eagleman (born April 25, 1971) is an American neuroscientist, author, and science communicator. He teaches neuroscience at Stanford University and is CEO and co-founder of Neosensory, a company that develops devices for sensory substitution. He also directs the non-profit Center for Science and Law, which seeks to align the legal system with modern neuroscience and is Chief Science Officer and co-founder of BrainCheck, a digital cognitive health platform used in medical practices and health systems. He is known for his work on brain plasticity, time perception, synesthesia, and neurolaw.He is a Guggenheim Fellow and a New York Times-bestselling author published in 32 languages. He is the writer and presenter of the international television series, The Brain with David Eagleman, and the host of the podcast "Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman". Eagleman was born in New Mexico to Jewish parents Arthur and Cirel Egelman, a physician and a biology teacher, respectively. Eagleman decided to change his name from Egelman after discovering alternative spellings in personal genealogy research. An early experience of falling from a roof raised his interest in understanding the neural basis of time perception. He attended the Albuquerque Academy for high school. As an undergraduate at Rice University, he majored in British and American literature. He spent his junior year abroad at Oxford University. He graduated from Rice in 1993. He earned his PhD in Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine in 1998, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the Salk Institute.

Eagleman is an adjunct professor at Stanford University, after directing a neuroscience research laboratory for 10 years at Baylor College of Medicine. He serves as the Chief Science Advisor for the Mind Science Foundation, and is the youngest member of the board of directors of the Long Now Foundation. Eagleman is a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fellow of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, and a council member on the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Neuroscience & Behavior. He was voted one of Houston's Most Stylish men, and Italy's Style fashion magazine named Eagleman one of the "Brainiest, Brightest Idea Guys" and featured him on the cover. He was awarded the Science Educator Award by the Society for Neuroscience. He has spun off several companies from his research, including BrainCheck, which helps medical professionals assess and diagnose cognitive impairment and dementia, and Neosensory, which uses sound-to-touch sensory substitution to feed data streams into the brain, as described in his TED talk.Eagleman has been profiled in magazines such as the New Yorker, Texas Monthly, and Texas Observer, on pop-culture television programs such as The Colbert Report and on the scientific program Nova Science Now. Stewart Brand wrote that "David Eagleman may be the best combination of scientist and fiction-writer alive". Eagleman founded Deathswitch, an internet based dead man's switch service, in 2007. He also appeared on MPR News, in a segment called Ask a Neuroscientist, where he answered audience-submitted questions.As opposed to committing to strict atheism or to a particular religious position, Eagleman who was raised Jewish, refers to himself as a possibilian, which distinguishes itself from atheism and agnosticism by studying the structure of the possibility space.