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Karl Deisseroth has been awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine 🔬

The professor of bioengineering and of psychiatry and behavioral sciences won “for discoveries leading to optogenetics, which makes it possible to switch on, or off, the activity of individual nerve cells in a living brain.”

He shares the award with Peter Hegemann from the Humboldt University of Berlin and Georg Nagel from the University of Würzburg in Germany.

“I couldn’t be happier because the trio that the committee picked spans the progression from the early algal explorations all the way to advanced neuroscience experiments, and so this prize really captures the full journey of discovery,” said Deisseroth, who is the D. H. Chen Professor and a professor in the schools of @stanford.med and @stanfordeng.

Deisseroth established his preeminence as a leader in neuroscience by developing a process to insert light-sensitive microbial proteins called opsins into mammalian brain cells, allowing selected cells to be controlled by light.

When the call from the Nobel committee came in at 12:27 a.m., Deisseroth missed it. Seconds later, the phone of his wife, Michelle Monje, rang, with one simple question on the other end: “May we speak with Karl?”

“I’m just so delighted. I know I’m biased, but he’s really transformed the field of neuroscience – and actually several other fields,” said Monje, the Milan Gambhir Professor in Pediatric Neuro-Oncology at Stanford Medicine. “I’m so proud of him.”

“I was quite surprised,” Deisseroth said of the recognition. “But Michelle was quite… unsurprised.”

📸: Andrew @brodhead by @stanfordeng

“We don’t say, how can we use an existing tool well? We look at the problem and say, how can we make a new tool that will allow us to answer questions much, much more effectively?”

This build-the-tool mindset is how Karl Deisseroth and his colleagues developed optogenetics, now routinely used in thousands of labs all over the world.

Deisseroth, a Stanford professor of bioengineering and of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, was one of three scientists awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering and developing optogenetics. @bioe_stanford is a department jointly run by the School of Engineering and @stanford.med. by @stanfordeng

Karl Deisseroth knew that understanding the brain would take more than understanding its chemistry. He joined Stanford Bioengineering to work alongside people who could build the tools to advance brain science. In this interview he says, “I don’t think I could have done what we did anywhere else, really.”

Deisseroth, a Stanford professor of bioengineering and of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, was one of three scientists awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering and developing optogenetics. @bioe_stanford is a department jointly run by the School of Engineering and @stanford.med. by @stanfordeng

Karl Deisseroth came to neuroscience through words. His love of literature and writing drew him toward the human brain, and a required psychiatry rotation in medical school set him on the path to developing optogenetics. In this conversation, he traces that journey.

Deisseroth, a Stanford professor of bioengineering and of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, was one of three scientists awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering and developing optogenetics. @bioe_stanford is a department jointly run by the School of Engineering and @stanford.med. by @stanfordeng

Nina Zhao is working to map the drugs, pesticides, and pollutants we encounter in daily life – often unknowingly – and to understand how they shape human and ecosystem health. by @stanfordeng

“We live in a chemical world. I want to understand all the chemical exposures in our daily life and how that connects to our health.

Using public mass spectrometry data collected by researchers around the world, our team and I characterized thousands of drug metabolites – the byproducts left over when your body breaks down a drug – at once.

At Stanford, I am building a research program that uses such computational approaches to make the investigation into environmental chemicals faster and more systematic. Now, with the help of AI, what took months in the past probably takes me only days to weeks.

A project we are currently pursuing asks how gut microbes transform medicines. We are testing approximately 200 drugs with a defined community of human gut microbial species, then using mass spectrometry to detect the new molecules that the microbes produce.

We plan to publish our discoveries as an open-access library so other researchers can better understand drug metabolism in their own datasets. Although there is still a long way to go, we hope our data can contribute to the precise modulation of people’s gut microbiomes to make drugs more effective for – or less toxic to – each individual person.

This work was made possible by federal funding. Federal funding has also allowed me to expand my research and collaborate with more people.

Academia gives us the freedom to explore – to fire up ideas that industry can pick up, scale up, and bring to production. And Stanford is like Disneyland for a scientific researcher; I feel like whatever I want to work on, I can find a collaborator.

- Nina Zhao, #ResearchMatters

📸: Andrew @brodhead by @stanfordeng

“Everything has a limit; humans have a limit, AI has a limit, and computers have a limit. The question is: What’s the limit and are we aware of it?”

As part of our ongoing series featuring the people who make up Stanford Engineering, we introduce Lvmin Zhang, PhD student in computer science, whose research focuses on human-centered computation.

“Many things that we thought should be the limits of AI turned out not to be. Today, AI is close to human ability, or actually beyond human in many areas.

So the boundary I care about most is where a person’s precise intention ends. Inside that boundary, the system should do exactly what the person specified. Outside that boundary is the space for exploration, where the tool can propose many possibilities and the human chooses. Questions like where to draw this boundary, when a human should be convinced by AI, and how the power of AI changes human intention itself are the questions I want to keep thinking about.”

Read Lvmin’s full story at the link in our bio.

📷: Rod Searcey by @stanfordeng

Scenes from Bioengineering’s celebration of Karl Deisseroth’s Nobel Prize.

🎥: Kurt Hickman by @stanfordeng

The Stanford Bioengineering community coming together to celebrate Karl Deisseroth and his incredible Nobel Prize achievement. 🥂✨

So proud to celebrate one of our own.

Video Credit: Julie Greicius

#stanford #nobel #nobelprize by @stanfordeng

What a momentous day in Stanford Bioengineering as we celebrate the incredible achievement of Karl Deisseroth, winner of the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. ❤️

We came together in the Shriram Center Tea Room for a celebration with heartfelt reflections shared by Dean Widom, Scott Delp, Russ Altman, Ross Venook, Olgalydia Winegar, Markus Covert, and Karl himself. Remarks inspired many laughs, wonderful stories, and even a few emotional moments that many of us will remember for a long time. It was especially meaningful to have faculty, staff, students, and esteemed alumni from Stanford Bioengineering and beyond, come together to celebrate this once-in-a-lifetime achievement and the impact Karl has had on science, our own community, and the world.

Days like today are a reminder of what makes Stanford Bioengineering so special — the people, the community, and the opportunity to celebrate each other’s wins - big and small.

Congratulations again, Karl! We are so proud to celebrate you and this incredible accomplishment.

Photo Credits: Andrew Brodhead and Kayla Jimenez

#stanford #bioengineering #nobel #nobelprize by @stanfordeng

“In many ways, we’re just getting going.”

Karl Deisseroth reflects on his Nobel moment, the discoveries ahead, and the collaborations that make Stanford special. “There’s a freedom of movement, a free diffusion of ideas, of people, that I haven’t encountered anywhere else.”

The professor of bioengineering and of psychiatry and behavioral sciences shares the 2026 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with two other researchers for their work in optogenetics, which makes it possible to switch on, or off, the activity of individual nerve cells in a living brain.

🎥: Kurt Hickman by @stanfordeng

Nobel Prize winner 🧠🌲♥️

Karl Deisseroth, PhD ’98, MD ’00, on optogenetics at 2023’s Reunion Homecoming.

Learn more in the @Stanford.Med link in our bio.

#Stanford #StanfordAlumni by @stanfordeng