Aaron Boes, MD, PhD, associate professor of pediatrics and director of the division of pediatric neurology, has been awarded the Roy J. Carver Professorship in Neuroscience in the Iowa Neuroscience Institute. The recognition honors his outstanding academic achievements and contributions to the Carver College of Medicine and Iowa Neuroscience Institute.

Boes’s research combines neuroimaging and noninvasive brain stimulation with a goal of improving treatment for depression and developing new brain stimulation treatments for disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. His lab has developed a novel approach to investigate the network effects of focal brain lesions. His approach, termed lesion network mapping, explores not only the lesion location but also the networks associated with that lesion site by using normative functional connectivity data from the human connectome project.

He developed and directs the UI Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation. Together with colleagues Mark Blumberg (psychological and brain sciences) and Thomas Nickl-Jockschat (psychiatry), Boes is leading an INI Research Program of Excellence investigating the human brain’s ability to undergo dynamic alterations in function, referred to as neuroplasticity.

Boes earned his undergraduate, medical and doctoral degrees at the University of Iowa. He joined the faculty in neurology in 2016 after completing residency at University of California, San Diego, and Harvard Medical School followed by a fellowship in neuropsychiatry and noninvasive brain stimulation at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston.

Carver Professorships are endowed by the Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust, whose transformational $45 million grant to the University of Iowa created the Iowa Neuroscience Institute in 2017.