Ann Martin Graybiel is an Institute Professor and a faculty member in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is also an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. Ann Martin Graybiel was born in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, in 1942. Her father, Ashton Graybiel, was a prominent medical doctor and researcher who investigated the effects of weightlessness and acceleration in astronauts and helped to prepare them for space motion sickness. Professor Graybiel received her bachelor's degree from Harvard University in 1964, majoring in biology and chemistry, and an M.A. in biology from Tufts University in 1966. 

In 1994 she was named Walter A. Rosenblith Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and in 2001 was promoted to Investigator at the MIT McGovern Institute for Brain Research. In the same year Professor Graybiel went to the White House to receive the nation's highest science award, the National Medal of Science, and she was the only female among 14 recipients.