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John Sherwood

Co-Founder & CEO

John Sherwood, PhD

Neuroscientist and entrepreneur pioneering neurotechnology and organoid electrophysiology to advance research and drug discovery.

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Dr. John Sherwood, Director of Neuroscience at LeafLabs, brings 20+ years of expertise as an electrophysiologist across academia, NIH, Eli Lilly, Harvard, and the Broad Institute. He pioneered recordings in human cerebral organoids, providing the first evidence of organized network activity. As PI on NIH and DARPA awards, he advanced neurosensing IC chips, silicon probes, and automated spike‑sorting pipelines. At LeafLabs, he is advancing the commercialization of neurotechnology tools, applying deep technical expertise and entrepreneurial training to position them for impact in drug discovery and therapeutic innovation.

Education
He received a B.Sc. and Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Bristol, UK, and completed postdoctoral training at NIH, Eli Lilly, and Harvard University / Broad Institute.
Grant support
  • 1R44AA033838 — A novel organoid brain-chip platform for accelerating drug discovery. (NIH, PI, 2026–2027)
  • 1R43MH134730-01 — Untethered high channel count electrophysiology for freely-moving animals (NIH, PI, 2023–2026)
  • 2R44MH114783-04 — High channel count electrophysiology and data processing for freely-moving animals (NIH, PI, 2021–2024)
  • 1R41MH116752-01 — Toward Automated Spike Sorting via Ground Truth Neural Recordings (NIH, PI, 2018–2020)
  • 1R44MH114783-01 — High channel count electrophysiology and data processing for freely-moving animals (NIH, PI, 2017–2020)
  • 5R43MH109332-02 — High Speed, Multi-sensor Light Field Deconvolution Microscopy for Whole Brain Recording of Neuronal Activity (NIH, PI, 2016–2019)

All funding →

Selected publications