Donna L. Maney
Donna L. Maney is a professor and neuroscientist at Emory University. She has conducted research on the neurochemistry underlying social reward, the effects of hormones on sensory systems, and the evolution of social behavior. For the past decade, she and her research group have been studying a “supergene” in a songbird model that is mimicking the early evolution of sex chromosomes.
Maney recently became interested in the conceptualization of sex broadly in all species, including humans. Much of her current work focuses on how sex differences are discovered and reported in biomedical research and how these differences influence public policy. At Radcliffe, she is collaborating with scientists at Harvard University and the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health to develop resources to help make biomedical research more sex/gender inclusive while upholding high standards of rigor.
After graduating from Cornell University, Maney earned a PhD in neurobiology and behavior from the University of Washington and conducted postdoctoral studies at Johns Hopkins University. Her work has been published in more than 50 different scientific journals spanning a wide variety of fields—not only neuroscience but also ornithology, endocrinology, sensory physiology, genetics, ecology, evolution, pediatrics, and women’s health. She has funded her research and teaching with grants from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation. She is a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers and has been named a Kavli Frontiers of Science participant by the US National Academy of Sciences.
