Keynote Address

Date: March 18, 2026
Time: 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
Location: Centennial Room

Keynote Speaker - Charan Ranganath, Ph.D.

Director, Memory and Plasticity (MAP) Program
Professor, Center for Neuroscience & Department of Psychology
University of California at Davis

Dr. Ranganath is the principal investigator (PI) in the Dynamic Memory Lab and author of the New York Times Bestseller, Why We Remember.

Dr. Charan Ranganath is an affiliated faculty with the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience. He is also director of the Dynamic Memory Lab at UC Davis and is an affiliated faculty member with the Center for Mind and Brain. For over 25 years, Dr. Ranganath has studied the mechanisms in the brain that allow us to remember past events, using brain imaging techniques, computational modeling and studies of patients with memory disorders. Professor Ranganath's research concerns the neurocognitive structure of human memory and executive control. His research involves the use of functional neuroimaging, electrophysiology and behavioral methods to study the neural basis of human memory and executive control. Dr. Ranganath has been recognized with several awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship. In 2015, he was one of 11 researchers in the United States to receive a National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellowship. His research has been funded by grants from the Department of Defense, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and several private foundations.