Moran Cerf

Cerf was born in Paris, France, to a Jewish family, and raised in Israel. As a young kid, he was an art prodigy, studying in the Israeli School of Arts. He was a part of many Israeli kids TV shows and had a number of public appearances as a kid that garnered him attention in Israel. In 2002, he had one of the first podcasts in the world, where he hosted a weekly radio show.

As a young kid, Cerf became an avid programmer and was part of a small community of hackers that paved the road to online white hat hacking.[18][19][2]

Cerf holds a Bachelor of Science in Physics (1998–2000), and a Master's Degree in Philosophy (2000) from Tel Aviv University.

In 2002, he received the prestigious Presidential Scholarship award in Israel while originally pursuing a Ph.D. in philosophy.[20] In 2005, he shifted to neuroscience and ultimately completed a Ph.D. in neuroscience at CalTech (2009).

While pursuing his studies, Cerf worked as a white hat hacker in the Israeli emerging Cybersecurity world,[21] performing penetration tests for banks and government institutes. He attributes much of his understanding of the brain and the way he researches the time spent breaking codes and performing penetration tests. A single meeting with the late Francis Crick where the two discussed the importance of "using hacking skills to study the most interesting vault in the world – our brain" made Prof. Cerf leave his senior business post and pursue full-time Ph.D. at CalTech, under Prof. Christof Koch.[19][22] He completed his Ph.D. at CalTech between the years 2005–2009 and worked on one of the flagship projects in neuroscience: "Single Neuron Recording in Humans". The project involves studying humans using direct recordings from their brain while they are awake with electrodes implanted inside their heads. This unique research setup has garnered him worldwide recognition and resulted in some of the famous publications that positioned Cerf at the forefront of neuroscience research.[23]

Following his time at CalTech Professor Cerf has moved to NYU where he spent three years studying what makes content engaging and looking for ways to translate his neuroscience research to a broader audience. It is the time there that he attributes to his interest in finding ways to understand how to translate brain research to applications and the need to work together with the business world to communicate science.[24][25][26][3]

Following his time at NYU studying engagement, and with the growth of public attention to his work (partially due to his repeated nationwide wins of the Moth Grandslam story-telling competition,[27][28][29] where he discussed the behind the scenes of neuroscience), Prof. Cerf became a public figure in the science communication sphere and his talks garnered a large following.[30]

In 2014, Cerf was offered a job as a professor at the Kellogg School of Management, where he holds positions as both a business and neuroscience professor.[31]

In 2016, he joined the MIT Media Lab as a visiting professor where he started working on dream recording and manipulation.[32]

Cerf is well known for his research on consciousness and projecting people's thoughts and dreams directly from their brain,[33][34][35] for his research on free will,[36] for his comments on the future of humans[37][38] and the ability to hack our brains, and for his recent work in business and neuroscience in marketing, where he found a way to predict people's interest and engagement with content by observing their neural responses.[39] For this work, he was named by Prof. Phil Kotler (father of modern marketing) "the next leader in marketing".[40] He is a frequent contributor to "Business Insider",[41][42] "Forbes"[43] and various other popular media journals where he writes about topics of neuroscience and business and ways to implement science in decision-making.[44][45][46][47]

In his 2016 TED talk, Cerf discussed a method for extraction of dreams which he is rumored to turn into a company, Dream-Alike. Similar mention of his work about projecting thoughts was later discussed in a blog post at ‘Wait But Why’.[48]

Prior to his academic career, Cerf held positions in pharmaceutical, telecommunications, fashion, software development, and innovative research fields.

• Competition and attention in the human brain: Single neuron recordings and eye-tracking in healthy controls and subjects with neurological and psychiatric disorders, Lap Lambert Academic Publishing, 2012, ISBN 9783844309591
• Single Neuron Studies of the Human Brain: Probing Cognition, co-authored with Itzhak Fried and Ueli Rutishauser and Gabriel Kreiman, The MIT Press, 2014, ISBN 9780262323994
• Consumer Neuroscience, MIT Press, 2017, ISBN 9780262036597
• Foresight, Northwestern University, 2017, ISBN 978-1983736643

• 2016: 40 leading professors below 40[8]
• 2010, 2016: 2 times US champion of the Moth Grand-Slam[64]

In 2018, Cerf founded B-Cube, a non-profit that aims at helping organizations use advances in neuroscience to change behavior. While B-Cube's endeavors are not public, it is estimated that they invested shy of $12M in 2018 in their projects.[65] From their website, it seems that B-Cube has worked with Ferrari (on improving risk assessment in driving), with SS&C (on ways to improve learning in classrooms), with Viacom (on applications of neuroscience to entertainment) and with Founders Pledge (on using neuroscience for social good).[5]

Given that Cerf is the host and curator of PopTech,[4] responsible for their fellow's program, it was suggested that B-Cube may be involved in the PopTech mission for social good promotion through technology.

Cerf has spoken at the U.N and various organizations on ways to use neuroscience and research to promote young individuals’ rise out of poverty, on the ethics of using neuroscience to prevent threats to democracy and on the dangers of the attention economy.[54][66][67]

Cerf's political affiliation is unknown although he has worked with the United States Digital Service (USDS) under President Obama, and continued working with 18F during the Trump administration. His work focused on a-political aspects of cybersecurity (a project known as ‘login.gov’).[68]

In 2017, Cerf dated actress Ashley Judd. They were last seen together at the Sundance Film Festival. In 2011–2012 Cerf dated actress Kristina Anapau (True Blood).[69] In 2016, Cerf was selected as one of Elle Magazine’s most eligible bachelors.[70]

In his free time, Cerf is a pilot (Private Jets and Helicopters).[2]

• Board member, Chicago Ideas
• Host and curator, PopTech
• Co-founder, Human Intracranial Research Foundation
• Board Member, VR Americas
• Co-Founder, ThinkAlike
• Founder (rumored), DreamAlike
• Presidential Innovation Fellow, White House USDS/18F
• Founder, B-Cube

• List of neuroscientists
• List of hackers
• David Eagleman
• Dan Ariely
• Bryan Johnson (entrepreneur)
• Elon Musk

• Moran Cerf's official website
• Moran Cerf, Le "Hacker" Du Cerveau
• Moran Cerf at TED (conference)
• B-Cube