Dani Bassett

Dani Bassett joins the FAS and SEAS as Wu Tsai Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Psychology. Bassett is most well-known for blending neural and systems engineering to identify fundamental mechanisms of cognition and disease in human brain networks. They received a BS in physics from Penn State University and a PhD in physics from the University of Cambridge, UK, as a Churchill Scholar, and as a National Institute of Health (NIH) Health Sciences Scholar.

Following a postdoctoral position at UC Santa Barbara, Bassett was a Junior Research Fellow at the Sage Center for the Study of the Mind. Bassett has received multiple prestigious awards, including American Psychological Association's ‘Rising Star’ (2012), Alfred P Sloan Research Fellow (2014), MacArthur Fellow Genius Grant (2014), Early Academic Achievement Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (IEEE) Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (2015), Office of Naval Research Young Investigator (2015), National Science Foundation CAREER (2016), Popular Science Brilliant 10 (2016), Lagrange Prize in Complex Systems Science (2017), Erdos-Renyi Prize in Network Science (2018), Organization for Human Brain Mapping Young Investigator Award (2020), American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering) College of Fellows (2020), American Physical Society Fellow (2021), Justine and Yves Sergent Award (2025), Fellow of the Network Science Society (2026), and has been named one of Web of Science's most Highly Cited Researchers for seven years running.

Bassett is the author of more than 500 peer-reviewed publications, which have garnered over 71,000 citations, as well as numerous book chapters and teaching materials. Bassett’s work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Army Research Office, the Army Research Laboratory, the Office of Naval Research, the Department of Defense, the Alfred P Sloan Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Paul Allen Foundation, the ISI Foundation, and the Center for Curiosity. Bassett co-authored Curious Minds: The Power of Connection (MIT Press) with philosopher and twin Perry Zurn.