DLF Science Advisory Board Spotlight
Dan Lewis Foundation | Summer 2023

Michael C. Crair, Ph.D., serves on the Science Advisory Board for the Dan Lewis Foundation and on its Board of Directors. Dr. Crair has been instrumental in developing the research agenda the Dan Lewis Foundation has established. He recently worked with members of the Science Advisory Board to select the first winner of the Dan Lewis Foundation Award, an award selecting a post-doctoral neuroscientist working in the field of brain regeneration.


Michael C. Crair is the William Ziegler III Professor in the Department of Neuroscience, Professor of Ophthalmology & Visual Science, and Vice Provost for Research at Yale University. Dr. Crair obtained his doctoral degree in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, and did postdoctoral training in physics and neuroscience at Kyoto University and Kyoto Prefectural Medical School in Japan and in neuroscience at the University of California, San Francisco. He was a faculty member at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, before coming to Yale as a member of the Department of Neuroscience in 2007. He has directed Yale’s Vision Core Program, the Graduate Program in Neuroscience, was Deputy Chair of the Department of Neuroscience from 2015-2017, then Deputy Dean for Scientific Affairs (Basic Science Departments) at the School of Medicine from 2017-2020 when he became the Vice Provost for Research at Yale University.


Dr. Crair maintains an active research program that develops and employs advanced imaging techniques to examine the basic mechanisms that mediate brain circuit development. He has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of neural activity in the developing brain by demonstrating that early spontaneous neuronal activity is an essential part of normal brain development. He is currently exploring the mechanisms by which this activity is generated and how it shapes brain circuit development. He has been awarded numerous honors for his research and teaching, including the Esther A. and Joseph Klingenstein Foundation Fellowship Award in the Neurosciences, the Marc Dresden Excellence in Graduate DLF Science Advisory Board Spotlight Education Award, and a NARSADSidney R. Baer Jr. Foundation Young Investigator Award. He has also been named an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellow, a John Merck Fund Scholar, and the March of Dimes Foundation’s Basil O’Connor Fellow. 

Gloved hands hold a tablet showing medical data in a lab with blurred researchers in the background

ARPA-H Launches a Major Program in Brain Regeneration and Initiates a Second Offshoot Program

By Dan Lewis Foundation • July 24, 2026
ARPA-H, which stands for Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, is an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. One of its major projects is called the FRONT program which stands for Functional Repair of Neocortical Tissue .  The FRONT program focuses on repair and regeneration of the neocortex, the largest part of the brain. The neocortex is critical for many aspects of cognition and everyday functioning. The neocortex can be damaged in many ways including stroke, traumatic injury, and neurodegeneration, such as in Alzheimer's disease. Serious damage to the neocortex often causes individuals to be dependent on costly therapies or caregivers and can also lead to related health and medical problems. The FRONT program hopes to alter this pattern by using cutting-edge neurodevelopmental principles and stem cell technology to regenerate brain tissue and restore lost functions.
Lab technicians in blue gloves working with samples in a bright laboratory

Can Lost Brain Tissue Be Rebuilt?

By Hal Lewis • July 24, 2026
For decades, families facing severe traumatic brain injury have lived with a painful assumption: once brain tissue is lost, recovery is limited to what the surviving brain can re-learn. Rehabilitation can help. Technology can assist. Time can produce surprises. But the central wound—the loss of brain cells, circuits, and connections—has often been treated as permanent. That assumption is beginning to change.