John F. Cryan, PhD profile page

Dr. John F. Cryan is professor and chair of the Department of Anatomy and Neuroscience at University College Cork (UCC), where he has served as vice president for research and innovation since 2021. He is also a principal investigator at APC Microbiome Ireland. He received a BSc in biochemistry and a PhD in pharmacology from the University of Galway and undertook a visiting fellowship at the University of Melbourne. This was followed by postdoctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania and The Scripps Research Institute. Before joining UCC in 2005, he spent four years as a group leader at Novartis in Basel. Over the past two decades, Cryan's research has helped transform understanding of the microbiota–gut–brain axis, revealing how interactions between the gut microbiome and the brain influence stress resilience, behavior, neurodevelopment, aging, and psychiatric and immune-related disorders across the lifespan. Cryan is senior editor of Neurobiology of Stress and serves on the editorial boards of numerous international journals. He has co-edited four books and is co-author of the international bestselling The Psychobiotic Revolution: Mood, Food, and the New Science of the Gut–Brain Connection (National Geographic Press). His contributions have been recognized through numerous international honors, including election to the Royal Irish Academy in 2017, the Datta Lectureship Award from FASEB in 2022, and election to the European Academy of Microbiology in 2026. He has delivered TEDMED and TEDx talks, and his work has been featured widely in international media, including the Netflix documentary Hack Your Health: The Secrets of the Gut.