Michael Shadlen MD, PhD is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Research Institute and Professor of Neuroscience at Columbia University. He is also a neurologist and a jazz guitarist. He obtained his undergraduate and medical degrees at Brown University, a PhD at UC Berkeley with Ralph Freeman and conducted postdoctoral training at Stanford with William Newsome. He then joined the Department of Physiology & Biophysics at the University of Washington, where he remained until 2012. His research focuses primarily on the neural mechanisms that underlie decision making.