Thomas Ernst KNÖPFEL, Prof

Professor Thomas Knöpfel, Chair Professor, Department of Physics, Director of JC STEM laboratory of Neuronal Circuit Dynamics. He graduated both in Physics and Medicine at the Ulm University (Germany) and promoted at the University of Zürich (Switzerland), where he also served as assistant and associate professor before acquiring some experience in drug discovery at Swiss Big Pharma. In 1997 Thomas Knöpfel relocated to Japan to head the Laboratory for. Neuronal Circuit Dynamics at the newly established RIKEN Brain Science Institute. In 2013 he became Chair in Optogenetics and Circuit Neurosciences at Imperial College (UK). Prof Knöpfel joined HKBU 2023. He has published over 230 research papers in journals such as Nature, Nature Methods, Nature Communications, PNAS, J Neuroscience, J Neurophysiology, Cerebral Cortex. Notable reviews were published in Nature Review Neuroscience and Nature Review Drug Discovery. 

Professor Knöpfel research interest revolve around the fundamental question how the brain generates cognition and emotions. What defines as, from a natural science perspective, to be human? On the practical level, his experimental work make good use of the opportunities offered by optical imaging technologies and genetics. He actively collaborates with theoretical neuroscientists to unravel neuronal circuit mechanism.