Focusing on the big picture.
As a postdoc in cognitive neuroscience who's also a neurology fellow, Adam Gazzaley is a meld of basic science expertise and clinical experience: He studies brain aging in people by using functional magnetic resonance imaging at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, and he also sees patients at UC San Francisco's Memory and Aging Center. The 34-year-old native New Yorker dives with equal fervor into scientific research and nature photography, two lenses for viewing a single world of discovery. Growing up in Queens, Gazzaley knew from age 7 that he wanted to become a scientist, and as a teenager, he commuted long hours to attend the Bronx High School of Science. He earned an M.D.-Ph.D. from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. Gazzaley's hobby as a shutterbug periodically takes him on backpacking trips to document the beauty of the great outdoors. He sells fine-art prints of his photographs to individuals, hospitals, and clinics through his company, Wanderings Inc.