Turhan Canli is an Associate Professor of Integrative Neuroscience at Stony Brook University. Canli's primary research interests cover the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and molecular biology. Dr. Canli is the Director of the Graduate Program in Genetics, which coordinates education and training activities across 100 laboratories at Stony Brook University, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and Brookhaven National Laboratory, and currently supports 50 Ph.D. students in Genetics. Canli served on the National Advisory Council on Aging (NACA), Genetics Subcommittee, advising the National Institute on Aging (NIA), Division of Behavioral and Social Research (DBSR). He is also the PI, Founder and Director of the NSF-funded SCAN (Social, Cognitive, and Affective Neuroscience) Center, the only human research-dedicated MRI facility at Stony Brook. Current work in Canli's laboratory focuses on gene-environment interactions, specifically the molecular genetic and epigenetic mechanisms that regulate gene expression across the human genome. This general approach is applied to studies of individual differences in social stress reactivity, traits, and emotional behavior. Behavioral studies are conducted in the Department of Psychology. Canli's secondary area of interest is related to problems in the real world. He is a co-founder of the Neuroethics Society, an international scholarly society concerned with the ethical implications of neuroscience applications in the real world. He has served on the Executive Board of the Neuroethics Society since its inception in 2006, and also serves as a Senior Fellow in the Stony Brook Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics, as well as a member of the Advisory Council of the Brazilian Ethics and Bioethics Institute in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Canli received his Ph.D. in Psychobiology from Yale University in 1993, with postdoctoral training in behavioral, cognitive and affective neuroscience (Yale University'93-'95; Stanford University'95-2001), and later training in molecular biology (certification Molecular Biology Summer Workshop, Smith College, 2002; sabbatical leave at the Genomics Core Facility, Stony Brook University, Jan-Dec 2008).