Charan Ranganath is a Professor of Psychology in the College of Letters and Sciences at the University of California, Davis, where he has served on the faculty since 2002. He is also a Professor in the Center for Neuroscience, Director of the Dynamic Memory Lab, and Director of the Memory and Plasticity Program. Ranganath earned a B.A. in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Northwestern University. His research in Psychology investigates the neurocognitive structure of human memory and executive control, including the interplay between working memory and long-term memory. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, computational modeling, behavioral methods, and studies of patients with memory disorders, his lab examines how the brain encodes and retrieves complex events, supports navigation and goal-directed behavior, and responds to factors such as emotion, stress, curiosity, aging, and conditions like schizophrenia, epilepsy, stroke, and Alzheimer’s disease.

Ranganath has earned numerous honors, including the 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship, Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship, 2015 National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellowship from the Department of Defense, Young Investigator Award from the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, Samuel Sutton Award for Distinguished Scientific Contribution to Human ERPs and Cognition from the Society for Psychophysiological Research, Laird Cermak Award from the Memory Disorders Research Society, and Chancellor’s Fellowship from UC Davis. He authored the book Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Matters (Doubleday, 2024). Notable publications include “The medial temporal lobe and recognition memory” (2007), “Two cortical systems for memory-guided behaviour” (2012, Nature Reviews Neuroscience), and “States of curiosity modulate hippocampus-dependent learning via the dopaminergic circuit” (2014). With over 25 years of contributions funded by the National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, and foundations, his work has significantly influenced cognitive neuroscience, particularly in understanding hippocampal and prefrontal contributions to memory.

Professional Email: cranganath@ucdavis.edu