Draft:Rui Costa

Dr Rui Costa, D.V.M, PhD. (born Guarda, Portugal) is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Allen Institute, based in Seattle.

With over two decades of experience in neuroscience, he is an expert in the brain circuitry that underlies movement and learning. His studies focus on the neural circuits underlying the initiation and execution of self-paced movements, and the organization and refinement of movements during learning.

His work has shed light into how the brain chooses which actions to do to obtain desired outcomes, and how the brain toggles between goal-directed actions and habits. His discoveries have implications for movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, and psychiatric disorders, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Early Life & Education
Costa was born in Guarda, Portugal in 1972, where he grew up and attended high school. He received his D.V.M. from the University of Lisbon in 1996. Costa carried out his Ph.D. research with Dr. Alcino Silva at UCLA from 1998 to 2002 as a part of the GABBA graduate program of University of Porto, followed by postdoctoral work with Dr. Miguel Nicolelis at Duke University.

Career
Costa became a Section Chief at the National Institutes of Health in 2006. He moved to the Champalimaud Foundation in 2009, as one of the founding Investigators of the Champalimaud Neuroscience Program at the Champalimaud Institute of the Unknown. He was Deputy Director of the Champalimaud Neuroscience Program and then co-Director of Champalimaud Research. In 20116 he moved to Columbia University where he became a Professor of Neuroscience and Neurology, and then the CEO of the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute in 2017. He became President and CEO of the Allen Institute, established by Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen, in 2022.

Costa has made breakthrough contributions to the field of motor control. He developed and utilized novel molecular, cellular, electrophysiological and optical approaches to reveal how specific neuronal populations in the basal ganglia, as well as upstream and downstream circuits, are wired and operate during movement; and how plasticity and reorganization of these circuits underlies motor learning.

The traditional consensus, built over decades, was that basal ganglia exerted its role in movement via activation of a Go pathway - the direct pathway (prokinetic) - and inactivation of a No-go pathway - the indirect pathway (antikinetic). By using targeted recordings of the direct and indirect pathways, in conjunction with online gain or loss of function studies, Costa’s work has led to a revision of this model. He discovered that both pathways are active during movement and their activity is critical for movement. To come to this conclusion he developed new technologies, for example in vivo calcium imaging with genetically encoded sensors and fiber optic-based photometry, a now widely used technique. He found that activity in both striatal pathways is movement-specific, and organized in spatiotemporal patterns that encode the entire action space. Costa’s work lead to a model in which both pathways have complementary but different roles in movement and reinforcement, of fundamental import for understanding and developing therapies for movement disorders.

Costa’s work also revolutionized our understanding of the wiring and function of basal ganglia inputs and outputs. Costa pioneered the studies that showed that a sub-population of dopamine neurons from the substantia nigra pars compacta are transiently active before self-paced movement initiation, and are critical for initiating and invigorating future movements, a finding with implications for Parkinson’s disease. He also showed that different populations of corticospinal neurons differentially project to molecularly identified cell types in the spinal cord, and that there is coordination between motor cortex connectivity to spinal cord and striatal circuits. Additionally, he demonstrated projection-specific connectivity of basal ganglia outputs to brainstem nuclei, midbrain and thalamus.

Costa revealed cortico-basal ganglia circuit mechanisms underlying the automatization of movement sequences and the dichotomy between goal-directed actions versus habits. These studies revealed mechanisms by which habits can be formed and broken, and explored the effect of chronic stress in these mechanisms.

Finally, using a plethora of behavioral tasks and closed-loop brain-computer interface experiments he showed that plasticity in basal ganglia is critical to reinforce and refine the behavioral and neural activity patterns that lead to reward.

Selected Awards & Affiliations

 * Woolsey Lecture, University of Madison Wisconsin, WI, USA (2023)
 * Mina Bissell Award (2022)
 * NIH Director’s Pioneer Award (2021)
 * Elected Member of National Academy of Medicine, USA (2019)
 * Hughlings Jackson lecture, Montreal Neurosciences Institute, Canada (2019)
 * Adrian Seminar, University of Cambridge, UK. (2018)
 * Ariëns Kappers Award, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (2017)
 * Pfizer Award, Society of Medical Sciences, Portugal (2017)
 * GQ Men of the Year - Science, GQ, Portugal (2015)
 * ERC Consolidator Grant, European Research Council (2014)
 * Silver Medal for Medical Research, Ministry of Health, Portugal (2014)
 * Elected Member of European Moldecular Biology Organization (EMBO) (2014)
 * Knighted Commander of the Order of Sant'Iago da Espada, Portugal (2014)
 * The Louis-Jeantet Young Investigator Career Award, Switzerland (2014)
 * Young Investigator Award, Society for Neuroscience, USA (2012)
 * International Early Career Scientist, HHMI, MD, USA (2012 – 2017)
 * Seeds of Science Prize for Life Sciences 2010, Portugal (2010)
 * ERC Starting Grant, European Research Council, Brussels, Belgium (2009 – 2014)
 * Young Investigator Award, Neurofibromatosis Foundation, NY, USA (2001 – 2022)

Selected Academic Services & Boards

 * 2023 to present         SAB, Stanely Center, Broad Institute
 * 2021 to present         SAB, Champalimaud Foundation, Portugal.
 * 2021 to present         SAB, Friedrich Miescher Institute, Switzerland.
 * 2019 to present         SAB, Carney Institute for Brain Science, Brown University, USA.
 * 2020                          SAB, Center for Neuro-Electronics Research Flanders (NERF), Belgium
 * 2019                          SAB, Sainsbury Wellcome Center (SWC), UK.
 * 2018 to 2022             Co-Chair of the Gordon Conference on Basal Ganglia
 * 2015 to 2018             Board of Reviewing Editors, eLife, DC, USA.
 * 2015                          Advisory Board, EMBL Monterotondo, Italy.
 * 2014 to 2016             Executive Committee, Federation of European Neuroscience Societies.
 * 2014 to 2016             Chair, Program Committee, Federation of European Neuroscience Societies.
 * 2011 to 2015             Vice-President, Portuguese Society for Neuroscience.
 * 2008 to present         President of the Board of Directors of the American-Portuguese Biomedical Research Fund, New York, USA.