Niels Bohr Lecture by Prof. Michael Roukes

Integrated Neurophotonics:  A Vision for Massively-Parallel Interrogation of Brain Activity

Michael Roukes, a Robert M. Abbey Professor of Physics, Applied Physics, & Bioengineering California Institute of Technology

In 2011, six U.S. scientists from different disciplines banded together, outlined a vision [1], and managed to convince the Obama administration of the unprecedented opportunity that now exists to launch a coordinated, large-scale effort to map brain activity.  This culminated in the U.S. BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies), which was launched in 2013.  Our vision was predicated on the current level of maturity of diverse fields of nanotechnology that, for the first time, can now be coalesced to realize powerful new tools for neuroscience.  I will outline the assertions we made, and focus upon our own collaborative efforts toward these goals – at Caltech and beyond – to realize this exciting potential.

• Wednesday, November 12, 2014 at 15:15 in Aud. 1 at HCØ.

[1] Alivisatos A.P., Chun M., Church G.M., Greenspan R.J., Roukes M.L., Yuste R., The Brain Activity Map project and the challenge of functional connectomics. Neuron 74, 970-4 (2012).