R. Douglas Fields, Ph. D. is the Chief of the Nervous System Development and Plasticity Section at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. He received his B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, an M.A. degree at San Jose State University, and a Ph.D. degree from the University of California, San Diego, working jointly in the Medical School and Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Fields has conducted postdoctoral research at Stanford University, Yale University, and the NIH. He became Head of the Neurocytology and Physiology Unit, NICHD in 1994, and Chief of the Nervous System Development and Plasticity Section, NICHD in 2001. He is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Neuron Glia Biology, and member of the editorial board of several other journals in the field of neuroscience. He lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.