Speakers

Dr. Adamantidis is an Assistant Professor at the University of Bern. His lab investigates the functional wiring and dynamics of neural circuits controlling sleep and wake states using a combination of state-of-the-art molecular, cellular and behavioral technologies.

Dr. Aston-Jones is the Inaugural Director of the Brain Health Institute at Rutgers University and Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences, and the Murray and Charlotte Strongwater Endowed Chair in Neuroscience and Brain Health. His research focuses on the neural mechanisms of reward-motivated behavior, and examines the roles of ascending brain monoamine and peptide systems in addiction and cognitive processes.

Dr. Bruno is an Associate Professor of neuroscience at Columbia University. His lab has been conducting anatomical, physiological, imaging, and behavioral experiments to investigate the workings of sensory circuits, specifically in barrel cortex, which mediates rodents’ sense of touch with their large facial whiskers.

Dr. de Lecea is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine. His lab is interested in the role of neuromodulators in mammalian behavior, especially behaviors related to sleep, reward, stress, and learning/memory.

Dr. Disney is an Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University. Her lab investigates how neuromodulators – particularly acetylcholine – alter activity in mammalian cortical circuits.

Dr. Rainer Friedrich is senior group leader at the Friedrich Miescher Institute (FMI) and Professor at the University of Basel. His group studies information processing and memory in the olfactory system.

Veronica Galvin is a senior graduate student in the lab of Dr. Amy Arnsten at Yale University. The Arnsten group investigates the molecular influences on circuitry underlying working memory in the prefrontal cortex.

Dr. Gulledge is an Associate Professor at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College. His lab is investigating the signaling mechanisms by which information is communicated within and between cortical neurons.

Dr. Gutkin is a Director of Research at the CNRS. His research focuses on spike generating dynamics and neuromodulation, working memory, spikes and neuromodulation, integration of synaptic input in active dendritic trees, and computational models of addiction.

Dr. Hasselmo is Director of the Center for Systems Neuroscience at Boston University. His lab studies neuromodulation using intracellular and extracellular recordings.

Dr. Higley is an Associate Professor at Yale University. The goal of his lab is to understand the development, organization, and function of the mammalian neocortex. The lab is particularly focused on examining how single neurons and local circuits participate in the perception and storage of sensory information.

Dr. Kirkwood is a Professor at Johns Hopkins University. His research career has been devoted to understanding the regulation of synaptic plasticity mechanisms underlying learning and memory formation. His efforts have focused on 3 main themes: postnatal developmental cortical plasticity, neuromodulation of plasticity and aging.

Dr. Lee is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at KAIST. Her group combines state-of-the-art anatomical, physiological, and behavioral techniques to bring key advances in our understanding of the neural basis of perceptual and cognitive behavior.

Dr. Lüscher is a Professor at the University of Geneva. His lab investigates the cellular mechanisms that underlie drug reinforcement and addiction.

Dr. Mansvelder is a Professor and Head of the Department of Integrative Neurophysiology at Vrije University. Research in his lab focuses on how activity and synaptic plasticity in the prefrontal cortex and the ventral tegmental area  is regulated by  acetylcholine and dopamine.

Dr. Marblestone is the Chief Strategy Officer of Kernel, and a part-time research scientist with the Synthetic Neurobiology group at MIT. In his work with Dr. Ed Boyden at MIT, as part of a large collaborative network, he helped to initiate the field of optical connectomics using the combination of expansion microscopy, in-situ sequencing, genetic barcoding and machine learning.

Dr. Markram is a Professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Director of the Laboratory of Neural Microcircuitry (LNMC), and the founder and Director of the Blue Brain Project. His research is focused on synaptic plasticity and the microcircuitry of the neocortex.

Dr. Nevian is a Professor at the University of Bern. His current work concentrates on the basic mechanisms that are involved in synaptic plasticity and dendritic excitability and signal integration of cortical neurons.

Dr. Nir is an Assistant Professor at Tel Aviv University, Israel. His research focuses on sleep and cognition and state-dependent sensory processing across wakefulness, sleep, and anesthesia with a special focus on the role of noradrenergic neuromodulation.

Dr. Petersen is a Professor in the Brain Mind Institute at the Faculty of Life Sciences, EPFL. His laboratory investigates the functional operation of neural circuits in awake mice during quantified behaviour.

Dr. Puig is a group leader at the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park. She earned a BSc in Biochemistry and PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Barcelona and completed postdoctoral training at MIT. She studies the neural substrates of cognition in mice focusing on neural oscillations and neuromodulators.

Dr. Rainer is an Associate Professor at the University of Fribourg and adjunct Professor at EPFL. His research interests center on the study visual cognition, with particular emphasis of studying how the neural populations of the basal forebrain contribute to diverse aspects of brain function.

Dr. Ramaswamy is a Senior Scientist in the Blue Brain Project at the EPFL. He leads the neuromodulation
efforts at Blue Brain.

Dr. Roberts is a Professor at the University of Cambridge. Research in her lab focuses on the executive control functions of the prefrontal cortex and related brain structures, including the basal ganglia and the amygdala, and the modulation of these circuits by the monoamines.

Dr. Sakata is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Strathclyde. The goal of his research is to understand how sensory information is processed by brain circuits, and to develop better strategies for the improvement and restoration of sensory abilities, with emphasis on hearing.

Dr. Sandi is a Professor at the EPFL, Switzerland, where she heads the Brain Mind Institute and the Laboratory of Behavioral Genetics. She is President-elect of the Federation of European Neurosciences (FENS). Her lab studies how stress and personality traits affect brain function and behavior.

Dr. Sara is Director of Research Emerita, CNRS, Collège de France; Adjunct Professor, New York University Med School, and Visiting Professor, Institute of Neurosciences, Shanghai. Her research focuses on neuromodulation of locus coeruleus origin in cognitive flexibility and memory processes.

Dr. Shuler is an Associate Professsor at Johns Hopkins University. The goal of his laboratory is to understand how neural circuits learn to produce responses to environmental cues that increase the fitness of the animal and how disruption of this process contributes to cognitive disease.

Dr. Silberberg is an Associate Professor at the Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet. His lab studies the structural and func­tional properties of neocortical and striatal microcircuits, as well the interactions between these two brain areas (cortico-striatal pathway)

Dr. Sur is the Newton Professor of Neuroscience and Director of the Simons Center for the Social Brain at MIT, which he founded after 15 years as head of the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. His lab studies the organization, plasticity and dynamics of the cerebral cortex of the brain using experimental and theoretical approaches.

Dr. Thiele is a Professor in the Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University. His laboratory aims to understand mechanisms of visual processing, attention and the neuropharmacology thereof.

Dr. Wisden is a Professor at the Imperial College in London. He currently works on sleep and sedation.

Dr. KongFatt Wong-Lin is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at the Intelligent Systems Research Centre, School of Computing and Intelligent Systems, Ulster University.

Dr. Wong-Lin’s research interest is in computational modelling and mathematical analysis of systems and cognitive neuroscience. In 2017, he is a Moore Institute Visiting Research Fellow at the National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland.

Dr. Zaborszky is a Professor of neuroscience at Rutgers University. His lab is interested in how the basal forebrain is organized to modulate distributed
neuronal processes within sensory and higher order cognitive systems in the cerebral cortex.