Mu-ming Poo is currently the Director of Institute of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Director of CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, and Paul Licht Distinguished Professor Emeritus at University of Califonia at Berkeley. Poo received his B.S. degree in physics from Tsinghua University (Taiwan) in 1970 and his Ph. D in biophysics from Johns Hopkins University in 1974. Since 1976, he was on the faculty of UC Irvine, Yale University, Columbia University, UCSD, and UC Berkeley, where he had served as the Head of Division of Neurobiology of Department of Molecular and Cell Biology and Paul Licht Distinguished Professor in Biology. Poo had received Ameritec Prize (2001), China International Science & Technology Cooperation Award (2005), Qiushi Distinguished Scientist Award (2011), Gueber Prize in Neuroscience (2016), and Docteur Honoris Causa from Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris) and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He is a member of Academia Sinica (Taiwan) and National Academy of Sciences (USA), and a foreign member of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and founding member of Hong Kong Academy of Science. His research interests include nerve growth, synaptic plasticity, and neural circuit functions.