The rockefeller university

Event Details

Type

Friday Lecture Series

Speaker(s)

Edward Boyden, Ph.D., leader, synthetic neurobiology group, associate professor, MIT Media Lab, investigator, McGovern Institute, department of biological engineering and department of brain and cognitive sciences, co-director, MIT Center for Neurobiological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Robertson Investigator, The New York Stem Cell Foundation

Speaker bio(s)

To enable the understanding and repair of complex biological systems such as the brain, Dr. Boyden’s laboratory is creating novel optical tools that enable molecular-resolution maps of large-scale systems, as well as technologies for observing and controlling high-speed physiological dynamics in such systems. First, they have developed a method for imaging large 3-D specimens with nanoscale precision, by embedding them in a swellable polymer, homogenizing their mechanical properties, and exposing them to water, which causes them to expand isotropically manyfold. This method, which they call expansion microscopy (ExM), enables scalable, inexpensive diffraction-limited microscopes to do large-volume nanoscopy, in a multiplexed fashion. Second, Dr. Boyden’s laboratory has developed a set of genetically encoded reagents, known as optogenetic tools, that when expressed in specific neurons, enable their electrical activities to be precisely driven or silenced in response to millisecond timescale pulses of light. Finally, they have collaboratively developed strategies to image and record fast physiological processes in 3-D with millisecond precision, and are using them to acquire neural activity maps with single-cell resolution in living brain circuits. In this way, Dr. Boyden’s laboratory aims to enable the systematic mapping, control, and dynamical observation of complex biological systems like the brain.

 

Dr. Boyden is a professor of biological engineering and brain and cognitive sciences at the MIT Media Lab and the MIT McGovern Institute. He leads the synthetic neurobiology group, which develops tools for analyzing and repairing complex biological systems such as the brain, and applies them systematically to reveal ground-truth principles of biological function as well as to repair these systems. These technologies, created often in interdisciplinary collaborations, include expansion microscopy, which enables complex biological systems to be imaged with nanoscale precision; optogenetic tools, which enable the activation and silencing of neural activity with light; and optical, nanofabricated, and robotic interfaces that enable recording and control of neural dynamics. He has launched an award-winning series of classes at MIT that teach principles of neuroengineering, starting with basic principles of how to control and observe neural functions, and culminating with strategies for launching companies in the nascent neurotechnology space. He also co-directs the MIT Center for Neurobiological Engineering, which aims to develop new tools to accelerate neuroscience progress.

 

Dr. Boyden’s group has hosted hundreds of visitors to learn how to use new biotechnologies, and he also regularly teaches at summer courses and workshops in neuroscience, and delivers lectures to the broader public (e.g., TED, 2011; World Economic Forum, 2012, 2013, and 2016). Dr. Boyden received his Ph.D. as a Hertz Fellow in neurosciences from Stanford University, where he discovered that the molecular mechanisms used to store a memory are determined by the content to be learned. Before that, he received three degrees in electrical engineering, computer science, and physics from MIT. He has contributed to over 300 peer-reviewed papers, current or pending patents, and articles, and has given over 300 invited talks on his group's work.

 

Among other recognitions, he has received the Perl/UNC Neuroscience Prize in 2011; two NIH Director's Transformative Research Awards in 2012 and 2013; the Jacob Heskel Gabbay Award, the Grete Lundbeck Brain Prize, and the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, all in 2013; the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award, the Society for Neuroscience Young Investigator Award, and the Carnegie Prize in Mind and Brain Sciences, all in 2015; and the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences in 2016. He was named to the Technology Review "World’s Top 35 Innovators under Age 35" list in 2006 and to the World Economic Forum Young Scientist list in 2013, and his work was included in Nature Methods’s "Method of the Year" in 2010.

Open to

Public

Host

Gaby Maimon, Ph.D.

Reception

Refreshments, 3:15 p.m. - 3:45 p.m., Abby Lounge

Contact

Justin Sloboda

Phone

(212) 327-7785

Sponsor

Justin Sloboda
(212) 327-7785
jsloboda@rockefeller.edu

Readings

http://librarynews.rockefeller.edu/?p=4239