Ettenberg Bio

Dr. Ettenberg earned his Ph.D in Psychopharmacology (1980) from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where he worked under the mentorship of Professor Peter M. Milner. He then took a two year Medical Research Council of Canada post-doctoral fellowship to The Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego where he worked in Dr. Floyd E. Bloom’s Behavioral Neurobiology laboratory under the guidance of Dr. George F. Koob. He was appointed to the faculty of the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1982 where he is now Professor of Neuroscience and Behavior in the Department of Psychology. During his tenure at UCSB, Dr. Ettenberg has earned three of his institution’s most prestigious faculty awards -- “The Harold J. Plous Memorial Award” (1988) as outstanding assistant professor, the Academic Senate’s “Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award” (1993) in the sciences, and the Academic Senate's "Outstanding Graduate Student Mentor Award" (2011). Dr. Ettenberg is a member of numerous scientific associations and has been elected as a distinguished Fellow of both the American Psychological Society and the American Psychological Association. In addition to his research and teaching, Dr. Ettenberg has provided considerable service to the UCSB campus at the departmental, senate and administrative levels. He has served as Vice Chair and Chair of the Department of Psychology, Assistant Dean and then Acting Dean of Undergraduate Studies, and a five-year term as Acting Provost of the College of Letters & Science. Throughout his administrative career he has maintained an active program of teaching and research on the neurobiological basis of motivated behavior.