Email Address:
jwatson@mednet.ucla.edu
Work Phone Number:
310-206-7745
310-825-7587
Work Address:
760 Westwood Plaza
Los Angeles, CA 90095
760 Westwood Plaza
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Affiliations |
Professor Emeritus, Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior |
Dr. Watson received his Ph.D from the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA in 1985 in Jay Gralla's Laboratory in which he combined virology and protein biochemistry to identify early SV40 virus replication and transcription complexes associated with the nuclear matrix of eukaryotic cells. He then went on to do a postdoctoral fellowship in molecular biology of the nervous system in Dr. J. Gregor Sutcliffe's lab at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA, where he began his initial studies of neurodegenerative diseases focusing on identifying novel genes relevant to Huntington's Disease (HD). He returned to UCLA in 1989 as a member of the Mental Retardation Research Center and the Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, studying synaptic targets of neurodegenerative diseases that include Parkinson's Disease (PD), HD, and Alzheimer's Disease. He has also served as the Vice Chair of the Neuroscience Undergraduate Interdepartmental Program for the UCLA campus and Outreach Program Director for the Brain Research Institute (BRI). He also served as an Associate Dean in the Graduate Division from 2012 until 2019. He is currently an Emeritus Professor in Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences continuing his research in PD and HD.