GUINNES Series

For the inaugural event, SNE President Hilke Plassmann interviews Paul Glimcher.

We all know the “official” Paul Glimcher but do you know that his path was a bit more unconventional than the official bio lead us to believe?

The official story

In 1983, Paul Glimcher received an A.B. magna cum laude in Neuroscience from Princeton University. In 1989 he received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania, working with Randy Gallistel. He studied as a postdoctoral fellow with David L. Sparks at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1994, he began work as an assistant professor in the Center for Neural Science. In 2004, he founded the Center for Neuroeconomics. In 2008 he was promoted to full professor and in 2010 received the Silver endowed chair. In 2015 the Center for Neuroeconomics was “promoted” by NYU to the Institute for the Study of Decision-Making and in 2016 it launched the Human Project. In 2017 Paul became part-time CEO, and later shifted to Chief Scientific Officer, of Datacubed Health, a successful mHealth data collection company. Today he is a professor of Neuroscience and Physiology, Psychiatry, Economics and Psychology at NYU’s School of Medicine.

The unofficial story

Paul did not get admitted to college so had to beg his way in. When he applied to graduate school, his advisor gushed about two other students in his recommendation letter. Paul sailed around the world for two years with his girlfriend, reading Kant in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and considering becoming a professional sailing couple. Later, he failed his PhD defense, after which his PhD advisor disowned him and made him destroy his papers. When he was about to start his postdoc, his new advisor went sailing. Tony Movshon persuaded him to take his current job by using what Paul describes as an aggressive silence. When NYU’s President decided to cancel the $20M Human Project just after it had gone into the field after 3 years of preparation, Paul quit and moved to the medical school. Paul attributes most of his successes to a desire to win his dad’s approval.