Following his undergraduate work (Northwestern University), Quirk’s doctoral thesis (SUNY-Brooklyn) focused on hippocampal place cells, and his post-doctoral work (NYU) focused on the amygdala and conditioned fear. Prior to his post-doc, Quirk was a Fulbright Fellow in Honduras and developed a neuroscience laboratory focusing on malnutrition. After his post-doc, Quirk spent 25 years in Puerto Rico (PSM and UPR) developing a research program on prefrontal regulation of learned fear and avoidance in a rodent model. His work was funded by NIMH throughout this period and he is a NIH MERIT Awardee. Consistent with his interest in promoting neuroscience research and mentoring in developing countries, in 2001 Quirk joined the National Institutes of Health at the University of the Philippines – Manila to initiate an animal model of addiction treatment and teach graduate level neuroscience.