Robert C. Malenka (born June 21, 1955) is a Nancy Friend Pritzker Professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

[3] Malenka's main career is focused on studying the mechanisms of synaptic plasticity and the effects of neural circuits on learning and memory.

[4] While receiving these titles, he also completed his psychiatric residency at Stanford and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco.

[2] Malenka has spent the last ten years in his lab identifying the mechanically distinct forms of synaptic plasticity present in the human brain.

[1] Malenka is a two-time recipient of the Julius Axelrod Prize, one given as a mentorship award from the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (2011), and the other given to him by the Society for Neuroscience in 2016.