George Mountoufaris, Ph.D. Titles and Appointments Assistant Professor School Graduate School Department Physiology | Neuroscience Graduate Programs Biomedical Engineering, Cell and Molecular Biology, Genetics, Development and Disease, Neuroscience Biography George grew up in Athens, Greece, and completed his undergraduate studies in Molecular Biology and Genetics at the University of Crete. During that time, he worked in the laboratory of Nektarios Tavernarakis, studying the cellular mechanisms that control aging in C. elegans. He then moved to the United States to work as a research technician in the laboratory of Stavros Lomvardas at UCSF, where he contributed to the identification of epigenetic mechanisms regulating mammalian olfactory receptor gene expression. He next went to NYC to pursue a Ph.D. at Columbia University in the laboratory of Tom Maniatis. There, he used the mammalian olfactory system as a model system to investigate the role of multicluster protocadherin (Pcdh) diversity in neuronal wiring. Toward the end of his Ph.D., he became increasingly fascinated by the genetic and neural mechanisms that control evolutionarily conserved innate behaviors. This led him to join the laboratory of David Anderson at Caltech as a Helen Hay Whitney and Tianqiao, and later as a Chrissy Chen Postdoctoral Fellow. His work focused on the mechanisms regulating internal states in mammals, during which he identified neuromodulatory programs that control specific features of internal affective states — such as persistence — at the levels of neural dynamics and behavior. In 2026, he joined the faculty in the Department of Physiology with a secondary appointment in the Department of Neuroscience. The Mountoufaris Lab seeks to uncover evolutionarily conserved molecular, cellular, and circuit-level mechanisms that control internal affective states in mammalian systems. Publications Featured Publications The neural computation of affective internal states in the hypothalamus: A dynamical systems perspective. Nair A, Vinograd A, Liu M, Mountoufaris G, Linderman S, Anderson DJ, Neuron 2025 Dec 113 23 3887-3907 A line attractor encoding a persistent internal state requires neuropeptide signaling. Mountoufaris G, Nair A, Yang B, Kim DW, Vinograd A, Kim S, Linderman SW, Anderson DJ, Cell 2024 Oct 187 21 5998-6015.e18 Writing, Reading, and Translating the Clustered Protocadherin Cell Surface Recognition Code for Neural Circuit Assembly. Mountoufaris G, Canzio D, Nwakeze CL, Chen WV, Maniatis T, Annu Rev Cell Dev Biol 2018 Oct 34 471-493 Multicluster Pcdh diversity is required for mouse olfactory neural circuit assembly. Mountoufaris G, Chen WV, Hirabayashi Y, O'Keeffe S, Chevee M, Nwakeze CL, Polleux F, Maniatis T, Science 2017 Apr 356 6336 411-414 Pcdhαc2 is required for axonal tiling and assembly of serotonergic circuitries in mice. Chen WV, Nwakeze CL, Denny CA, O'Keeffe S, Rieger MA, Mountoufaris G, Kirner A, Dougherty JD, Hen R, Wu Q, Maniatis T, Science 2017 Apr 356 6336 406-411 Embryonic stem cell-based mapping of developmental transcriptional programs. Mazzoni EO, Mahony S, Iacovino M, Morrison CA, Mountoufaris G, Closser M, Whyte WA, Young RA, Kyba M, Gifford DK, Wichterle H, Nat Methods 2011 Nov 8 12 1056-8 An epigenetic signature for monoallelic olfactory receptor expression. Magklara A, Yen A, Colquitt BM, Clowney EJ, Allen W, Markenscoff-Papadimitriou E, Evans ZA, Kheradpour P, Mountoufaris G, Carey C, Barnea G, Kellis M, Lomvardas S, Cell 2011 May 145 4 555-70 Results 1-7 of 7 1 Honors & Awards Endowed Scholar of Medical Science (2025) UT Rising STARs award (2025) Tianqio and Chrissy Chen Postdoctoral Fellowship (2023) Helen Hay Whitney Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship (2019) Della Martin Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship (2018)
