Charan Ranganath, Ph.D.
Professor at the University of California, Davis, Center for Neuroscience and Department of Psychology, and director of the Dynamic Memory Lab
Charan Ranganath, Ph.D. is a Professor at the University of California, Davis, Center for Neuroscience and Department of Psychology, and director of the Dynamic Memory Lab. He is the author of the 2024 book Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold on to What Matters.
Dr. Ranganath studies the neural and functional organization of human memory processes in healthy individuals and in people with memory disorders. His research uses several methods, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), scalp electroencephalography (EEG), and direct electrocorticography (ECoG) recordings from the human brain. Using these techniques, Dr. Ranganath has investigated the brain mechanisms that support memory for past events (episodic memory), and the maintenance of remembered information to guide future behavior (working memory).
Dr. Ranganath’s work has been highly cited and recognized with several awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship, the Laird Cermak Award from the Memory Disorders Research Society, the Samuel Sutton Award for Distinguished Scientific Contribution to Human ERPs and Cognition, the Chancellor’s Fellow award from UC Davis, and the Young Investigator Award from the Cognitive Neuroscience Society.
Dr. Ranganath received a B.A. in psychology at the University of California at Berkeley and completed an M.S. and Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at Northwestern University. He went on to pursue postdoctoral training in brain imaging and neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania and UC Berkeley before starting his own lab at UC Davis.
