Yerkes National Primate Research Center
Stuart Zola, PhD, Director
One of eight national primate research centers funded by the NIH, Yerkes National Primate Research Center provides leadership, training, and resources to foster scientific creativity, collaboration, and discoveries.
Supported by $57 million in funding, Yerkes’ research program includes 161 research awards. Studies involve 3,300 nonhuman primates. Approximately 1,300 of the animals are at the main center on the Emory campus, and another 2,000 are at a 117-acre satellite facility in Lawrenceville, Georgia. The center also has 13,000 rodents in its research vivariums.
Yerkes has 365 staff members, 52 faculty scientists, 150 graduate and undergraduate students participating in research programs, and 62 postdoctoral fellows.
Yerkes is making landmark discoveries in microbiology and immunology, neuroscience, psychobiology, and sensory-motor systems. Other research focuses on vaccine development, progressive illnesses such as Alzheimer’s, memory, drug addiction, vision disorders, evolutionary links between biology and behavior, and interpretation of brain activity through imaging. Yerkes is the only U.S. primate center to have on-site MRI, PET, and cyclotron facilities.
Collaboration is key to Yerkes research. At the Living Links Center, scientists collaborate to study the animal roots of human social behaviors, such as cooperation, affiliation, and reconciliation. Yerkes researchers who also are members of the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience (CBN) collaborate with scientists from the CBN’s consortium of eight Atlanta-based institutions in research and education.
