M Bruce Maciver is a professor in the School of Medicine at the Stanford University Medical Center, Palo Alto, CA, USA. He was trained in neuroscience and pharmacology at the University of Calgary and began his career at Stanford over thirty years ago; he has directed the Stanford Neuropharmacology Laboratory since then. Currently, his research looks at the development of safer and more effective anesthetics using state-of-the-art electrophysiological approaches with in vitro brain slice preparations and freely moving animal studies. He is also using newly developed EEG analysis techniques in animals and human subjects to quantify brain states associated with the loss and recovery of consciousness. He was awarded the Allen V. Cox Medal from Stanford University in 2004 and the Elmer Zsigmond Award from the International Society for Anaesthetic Pharmacology in 2017.