Teresa Puthussery

Teresa Puthussery (born 1978 or 1979) is an Australian-born vision scientist and an associate professor in the Herbert Wertheim School of Optometry and Vision Science at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2025, she was named a MacArthur Fellow.

Biography Puthussery was raised in Warragul, Victoria Australia. Her mother was a math teacher and her father was a science teacher.

Puthussery studied at the University of Melbourne, Australia, graduating with a B.S. in 2000, a PhD in 2005, and a postgraduate degree in 2006. Before becoming a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, she was a postdoctoral research fellow and later an assistant professor at Oregon Health and Science University.

Selected publications Puthussery, T., Gayet‐Primo, J., Taylor, W. R., & Haverkamp, S. (2011). Immunohistochemical identification and synaptic inputs to the diffuse bipolar cell type DB1 in macaque retina. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 519(18), 3640–3656. https://doi.org/10.1002/cne.22756 Puthussery, T., Venkataramani, S., Gayet-Primo, J., Smith, R. G., & Taylor, W. R. (2013). NaV1.1 channels in axon initial segments of bipolar cells augment input to magnocellular visual pathways in the primate retina. The Journal of Neuroscience, 33(41), 16045–16059. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1249-13.2013 Puthussery, T., Percival, K. A., Venkataramani, S., Gayet-Primo, J., Grünert, U., & Taylor, W. R. (2014). Kainate Receptors Mediate Synaptic Input to Transient and Sustained OFF Visual Pathways in Primate Retina. The Journal of Neuroscience, 34(22), 7611–7621. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4855-13.2014 Wang, A. Y. M., Kulkarni, M. M., McLaughlin, A. J., Gayet, J., Smith, B. E., Hauptschein, M., McHugh, C. F., Yao, Y. Y., & Puthussery, T. (2023). An ON-type direction-selective ganglion cell in primate retina. Nature, 623(7986), 381–386. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06659-4