William Schafer is a neuroscientist who has studied principles by which neurons and neural circuits control behaviour. By studying nematode worms and octopus hatchlings, he has investigated how sensory neurons detect environmental stimuli, how neuromodulators control behavioural states, and how patterns of neuronal wiring relate to brain function. In the course of this work he has introduced new methods for detecting and recording the activities of neurons in living animals and for quantitatively behavioural phentoypes.

He obtained his PhD in Biochemistry from UC Berkeley and was a postdoc at UCSF. He was a faculty member at UCSD before moving to the LMB in 2006 and joining the faculty at KU Leuven in 2019. He is a member of EMBO and a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Academy of Medical Sciences.