Jeffrey Noebels was born in New Jersey, one of three children; the family then lived in southern California until they moved to Geneva, Switzerland, when Jeffrey was twelve. His father was a chemist at Beckman Instruments, Inc., and his mother a housewife. Noebels is now married, and he and his wife have two daughters.

Noebels at first planned to major in French literature at Reed College, but Mary Meikle’s class in physiological psychology captured his interest in brain function. He spent a year at University College London, which was then the epicenter of brain study. He decided to get both a PhD and an MD. He began with graduate school at Stanford University, working on epilepsy with Timothy Pedley and David Prince, who were both clinicians and researchers. The American Epilepsy Society’s William G. Lennox Fellowship sent him to Harvard University for postdoctoral work, and then he began medical school at Yale University, fully committed to the study of the brain. While doing his neurology residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, he won a Klingenstein Fellowship to work on epilepsy. Having completed his degrees, Noebels was recruited to Baylor, where he was offered a generous startup package and founded the Developmental Neruogenetics Laboratory.

Noebels discusses the importance of sharing information in science. He acknowledges a tension between the need to publish often and finalizing bench work. He agrees that new technology has proved invaluable to neuroscience. He enjoys teaching. He believes we will never fully understand how the brain works.