Gregory F. Ball, dean of research and graduate education, is a professor of psychological and brain sciences in the School of Arts and Sciences and director of the school's undergraduate neuroscience program.

Ball helps students and faculty initiate and carry out research and scholarship by pointing them toward institutional funds as seed money; by helping faculty develop new sources of grant support; and by working to develop interdivisional projects.

In his work to make the graduate student experience ever more successful, Ball works with the graduate board and the GRO on many substantive issues. His goal: to help improve the academic environment and quality of life for all of the school's graduate students. Ball also works closely with faculty and administrators to enhance the infrastructure for graduate student recruitment and admissions, and he supervises compliance with a variety of regulations and rules, including issues dealing with misconduct and human subject research.

A highly accomplished scientist and award-winning teacher and adviser, Ball directs the David S. Olton Behavioral Biology Program and holds joint appointments in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Division of Reproductive Biology, at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, and in the Department of Neuroscience at the School of Medicine. Before assuming the deanship, he served as a special assistant in the dean's office, working on a number of special projects with then-dean Eaton Lattman.

A member of the faculty of Arts and Sciences since 1991, Ball's research concerns the interrelation of hormones, brain, and reproductive behavior. He studies both how hormones act in the brain to modulate the learning and activation of behavior and how behavioral stimuli are processed by the brain to influence endocrine activity and the timing of seasonal reproduction. A particular focus of his in recent years has been the neuroendocrine regulation of vocal behavior and seasonal brain plasticity in birds, as well as studies of the rapid actions of brain estrogens.

Ball earned a BA in psychology from Columbia University in 1977 and a PhD in psychobiology from Rutgers University in 1983. He did his postdoctoral work at Rockefeller University in neuroendocrinology and ethology. Before coming to Hopkins, he held faculty appointments at Rockefeller University and Boston College. He has won several awards for his teaching and advising, including the Johns Hopkins Alumni Association Award for Excellence in Teaching and the George E. Owen Teaching Award, and he is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Ornithologists' Union.

Gregory F. Ball Dean of Research and Graduate Education

Gregory F. Ball
Dean of Research and Graduate Education