Einstein Visiting Fellow
The aim of the support program "Einstein Visiting Fellow“ of the Einstein Foundation is to bind top foreign scientists into the Berlin research landscape in order to thereby further strengthen the international profile of the Berlin universities and research facilities for the future.
A particular target group consists of those researchers who can add special expertise to the focus areas of science in Berlin but cannot be gained by the conventional route of appointment because they are bound to their home universities.
Each year, a maximum 150,000 € is made available as funding per "Einstein Visiting Fellow" by the Einstein Foundation. The scientists themselves can use this funding flexibly for their research.
You can find further information on the Einstein Foundation here.
Prof. Dr. Roger Traub has been a "Visiting Fellow" since December 2010 in the framework of the Einstein Foundation Berlin. He studied mathematics at Princeton University, New Jersey, USA, and then completed his medical studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
Since 2001, Roger Traub has been Professor for Physiology, Pharmacology and Neurology at the State University New York. In addition, he works as a research member for IBM at the Watson Research Center.
Roger Traub is an expert in the computer simulation of circuits between cortical neurons, which are used e.g. in the researching of epilepsy.
In cooperation with the working groups of Prof. Dr. Dietmar Schmitz and Prof. Dr. Michael Brecht, Roger Traub is researching rapid network oscillations and intracellular spikes and/or spikelets in vitro as well as in vivo. Due to Traub's realistic simulations, characteristic, verifiable predictions can now be made. This enables NeuroCure scientists to carry out deeper analysis on even cryptic experimental observations.
NeuroCure Visiting Fellows
Following the "Visiting Fellow“ program of the Einstein Foundation Berlin, NeuroCure also finances three renowned foreign scientists. These are to be incorporated into the research of the Cluster of Excellence for the long term and to contribute to synergies and international networking with new ideas. A precondition of this is that the visiting fellow is present in Berlin several times a year for a longer period of time and participates actively in the research activities of the cluster. This takes place e.g. in the form of joint projects, the development of new technologies or with scientific lectures, which also serve to supplement the teaching.
Annual funding of 50,000 € is available to the NeuroCure visiting fellows for three years and this can be deployed flexibly by the visiting fellow him or herself.
Prof. Dr. Burkhard Becher has been a Visiting Fellow of NeuroCure since January 2011. At the Institute for Neurophysiology of the Charité, he works in the laboratory of Prof. Dr. Frank Heppner.
Burkhard Becher is the Deputy Director of the Institute for Experimental Immunology at the University Hospital Zurich. After completion of his biology studies in Cologne, he completed a PhD in Microbiology and Immunology at the McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
His main interest is the researching of pathogenesis mechanisms that lead to the occurrence of diseases of the central nervous system. In this, he focuses upon immune-mediated processes. His working group works above all with in vivo animal models in the analysis of degenerative, malign and inflammatory processes. Burkhard Becher is especially interested in the role and function of inborn and adaptive immune defences during the development of degenerative diseases and their repair mechanisms and tumor immunology within the central nervous system.
Prof. Dr. Brian MacVicar has been a NeuroCure Visiting Fellow since March 2011. He works in the laboratory of Prof. Dr. Helmut Kettenmann at the Max-Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC).
Brian MacVicar studied Zoology and Neurophysiology at the University of Toronto. He now works as a professor in the department for psychiatry at the Brain Research Centre of the University of British Columbia, Canada. He is also President of the Canadian Association for Neuroscience.
The working group of Brian MacVicar carries out research on the physiology of glial cells, on the interaction of nerve cells with glial cells and on astrocyte vessel interactions. He was the first scientist of all to describe the voltage-controlled Ca2+ channels in astrocytes. His group also showed that so-called hemi-channels, proteins of a kind of gap junction, open during a stroke.
Prof. Dr. Istvan Mody has been a Visiting Fellow of the Cluster of Excellence since March 2011. He works in the laboratory of Prof. Dr. Uwe Heinemann at the Institute for Neurophysiology at the Charité.
Istvan Mody studied physiology with special focus upon neurophysiology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Since 1995 he has held a Tony Coelho Professorship for Neurology and Physiology at the UCLA School of Medicine, California. Among other posts, Istvan Mody has worked as a Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Post-Doc at the Max-Planck-Institute of Psychiatry in Munich.
His working group is conducting research into GABA channels and epilepsy.
