Michael Platt is a scientist known for asking some of the most challenging questions in 21st century neuroscience, and conceiving innovative ways to find the answers. His principal questions focus on the biological mechanisms that underlie decision-making and social interaction, the grasp of which has broad-scale implications for improving health, welfare, and business in societies worldwide.
Broad expertise in anthropology, psychology, economics, evolutionary biology, ethology, and marketing, in addition to collaborations with colleagues in these fields, have enabled him to reach ever-deeper levels of understanding about the neural bases of decision making and cognition. His current interests focus on applying the science and technology of the brain to business, particularly questions in branding, marketing, management, finance, innovation, and performance.
At GlassView, that program becomes practice: the scientific standards behind the signal live on the Science page, and Dr. Platt leads them.
Michael received his B.A. at Yale and his Ph.D. at Penn, both in anthropology, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in neuroscience at NYU. His work has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Klingenstein Foundation, the McDonnell Foundation, the EJLB Foundation, the Simons Foundation, the Kaufman Foundation, and the Department of Defense, among others. He won a MERIT award from the National Institute of Mental Health and was an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow.
Author of The Leader's Brain (Wharton Press), Michael has written over 160 peer-reviewed papers and over 60 review and opinion papers, and his work has been cited nearly 20,000 times. A revered instructor, he won the Master Teacher/Clinician Award from the Duke University School of Medicine and the Teaching Commitment and Curricular Innovation Award from the Wharton School. He is the former Director of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke, and the founding Co-Director of the Duke Center for Neuroeconomic Studies.
Michael created and directs the executive education course Neuroscience of Business and the online course Neuroscience in Business for Wharton Executive Education. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, the Guardian, and National Geographic, as well as on ABC's Good Morning America, NPR, CBC, BBC, MTV, and HBO Vice, and most recently in the PBS documentary Wired for Connection.
He serves on the Scientific Advisory Boards of several companies, as well as the Yang-Tan Autism Centers at MIT and Harvard, served on the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on Brain Science, served as President of the Society for Neuroeconomics, consulted on The Fountain by Darren Aronofsky, and co-founded Cogwear Inc., the UPenn Medicine spinout whose technology powers GlassView's signal.