Dietmar Plenz

Dietmar Plenz received his Ph.D. in Biology in 1993 at the Max Planck Institute of Biological Cybernetics, Germany, where he pioneered in vitro networks to study the emergence of neuronal population dynamics. He continued his investigations during a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Tennessee, Memphis, and joined the faculty at the National Institute of Mental Health in 1998. He studies the self-organization of neural networks at many scales ranging from in vitro preparations to animals and humans by combining electrophysiological and imaging techniques with computer modeling. He received the NIH Director award for the discovery of neuronal avalanches in 2010.