Moran Cerf

Cerf was born in Paris, France, to a Jewish family, and raised in Israel. As a young child he was an art prodigy, attending the Israeli School of Arts. He appeared in many Israeli TV shows for children when young, which 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 child, Cerf became an avid programmer and was part of a small community of hackers that paved the road to online white hat hacking.[17][18][1]

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 PhD in philosophy.[19] In 2005 he shifted to neuroscience, and ultimately completed a PhD in neuroscience at Caltech (2009).

While pursuing his studies, Cerf worked as a white hat hacker in the emerging Israeli cybersecurity industry,[20] performing penetration tests for banks and government institutes. He attributes much of his understanding of the brain and the way he researches to his 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 PhD at Caltech, under Prof. Christof Koch.[18][21]

Cerf completed his PhD at Caltech during 2005–2009 and worked on one of the flagship projects in neuroscience: "Single Neuron Recording in Humans". This project involves studying humans using direct recordings from their brain while they are awake with electrodes implanted inside their heads. This unique research setup gained him worldwide recognition and resulted in some of the widely cited publications that positioned Cerf at the forefront of neuroscience research.[22]

Following his time at Caltech Professor Cerf 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.[23][24][25][2]

Following his time at NYU studying engagement, and with the growth of public attention to his work (in part due to his repeated wins of the Moth Grandslam story-telling competition,[26][27][28] where he discussed the behind the scenes of neuroscience), Prof. Cerf became a public figure in the science communication sphere where his talks garnered a large following.[29]

In 2014 Cerf was appointed as a professor at the Kellogg School of Management, where he holds positions as both a business and neuroscience professor.[30]

In 2016 he joined the MIT Media Lab as a visiting professor, where he started his work on dream recording and manipulation.[31]

Cerf is well known for his research on consciousness and projecting people's thoughts and dreams directly from their brain,[32][33][34] his research on free will,[35] his ideas on the future of humans[36][37] and the ability to hack our brains, and for his work in the neuroscience in marketing. Applications include predicting people's interest and engagement with content by observing their neural responses.[38] For this work, he was named by Prof. Phil Kotler (father of modern marketing) "the next leader in marketing".[39] He is a frequent contributor to "Business Insider",[40][41] "Forbes"[42] and various other popular media journals where he writes on topics in neuroscience and business and ways to implement science in decision-making.[43][44][45][46]

In his 2016 TED talk, Cerf discussed a method for extraction of dreams which he was rumored to turn into a company, Dream-Alike. Similar mention of his work on projecting thoughts was later discussed in a blog post at ‘Wait But Why’.[47]

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[7]
• 2010, 2016: 2 times US champion of the Moth Grand-Slam[63]

In 2018, Cerf founded B-Cube, a non-profit that helps 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.[66] 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).[4]

As Cerf is the host and curator of PopTech[3] and responsible for their fellows program, B-Cube may also be involved in the PopTech mission for social good promotion through technology.

Cerf has spoken at the UN 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.[53][67][68]

Cerf worked with the United States Digital Service (USDS) under President Obama, and continued working with 18F during the Trump administration. His work focused on cybersecurity, in particular the ‘login.gov’ project.[69]

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).[70] In 2016, Cerf was selected as one of Elle Magazine’s most eligible bachelors.[71]

In his free time, Cerf is a pilot of private jets and helicopters.[1]

• 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