Elaine Bearer

Trained first as a musician — studying at the Manhattan School of Music and under Nadia Boulanger in Paris — Elaine Bearer subsequently pursued an MD–PhD at UCSF and became a neuropathologist and brain scientist. Since 2009 she has held the Harvey Family Endowed Professorship in Pathology at the University of New Mexico, while maintaining a parallel practice as a composer with over a hundred works. She was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2011. Her dual career bridges musical analysis, particularly of Haydn's string quartets, and neuroscientific research into the structure and function of the brain.