Henry Markram

Henry Markram began his research career at Cape Town University in South Africa in the early 1980s. He continued his research work in major research institutes in Israel (Weizmann Instt), United States of America (National Institute of Health) and Heidelberg in Germany (MPI, Heidelberg). He moved to EPFL in 2002 as a full professor and founder/director of the Brain Mind Institute.

Since the beginning of his career, he has worked on ion channels, synaptic plasticity and focused on neural microcircuitry, applying a broad range of anatomical, physiological, biophysical and molecular techniques, and pioneering the multi-neuron patch-clamp approach. His best-known discoveries are the principles of Spike Timing Dependent Plasticity (STDP), Redistribution of Synaptic Efficacy (RSE), and Long-Term Microcircuit Plasticity (LTMP). He has also worked intensively with theoretical neuroscientists to develop the concept of “liquid computing”, a novel technique for handling real time continuous input to recurrent neural networks. He has also been active in autism research, a field in which he has co-developed the “Intense World Theory of Autism”.

In 2005 Henry Markram founded the Blue Brain Project with the aim to build and simulate biologically founded brain circuits.