Ed Boyden, Ph. D.

MIT Media Lab, Benesse Career Development Professor
Synthetic Neurobiology (Neuromedia) Group, Leader
MIT Media Lab Center for Human Augmentation, co-director
MIT Department of Biological Engineering, MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, joint professor
MIT McGovern Institute for Brain Research, MIT Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, associate member
MIT Computational and Systems Biology Initiative, MIT Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience Track, faculty member
MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratories, affiliate member
curriculum vitae / resume
email esb@media.mit.edu

Our brains and nervous systems mediate everything we perceive, feel, decide, and do--and act as our ultimate interface to the world. An outstanding challenge for humanity is to understand these neuromedia interfaces at a level of abstraction that enables us to engineer their functions--repairing pathology, augmenting cognition, and revealing insights into the human condition.

The Synthetic Neurobiology group invents and applies tools to analyze and engineer brain circuits in both humans and model systems. Our current neuroengineering focus is on devising technologies for controlling the processing within specific neural circuit targets in the brain, deriving abstraction layers for systematically correcting neurological and psychiatric disorders. Many of these tools involve "optogenetic" technologies that we have developed for sensitizing neurons to being controlled with light.

We hope that this synthetic neurobiology approach to the brain will help us better understand--and engineer improvements upon--the nature of human existence.

NEWS
I was named to Discover Magazine's "20 Best Brains Under 40."
Want to support new, systematic approaches for treating neural disorders?
Interested in research or technical jobs in the Synthetic Neurobiology Group?
We have recently been profiled in the Discovery Channel's Best 5 Science Moments of the Year, and awarded a NIH Director's New Innovator Award, an inaugural Society for Neuroscience 'Research Award for Innovation in Neuroscience', an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, a NARSAD Young Investigator Award, a Wallace H. Coulter Early Career Award, and a slot in Technology Review's Top 35 Innovators Under Age 35.
Technologies for controlling neural circuit dynamics
Lentivirus production protocol for in vivo neural gene targeting Millisecond-timescale optical control of neural dynamics in the nonhuman primate brain Simple hardware platforms for bi-directional optical control of neurons and excitable cells Multiple-color optical activation, silencing, and desynchronization of neural activity ("optogenetics"),
with halorhodopsin (Halo, NpHR) and Channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2)		 Millisecond-timescale optical activation of neurons with ChR2 ("optogenetics")
OpenStim Noninvasive Brain Stimulator - open transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)
Blog Classes Inventions
My Blog, hosted by Technology Review Neurotechnology Ventures MAS.883 / 9.455 / 15.128 / 20.454 (Fall 2008) Principles of Neuroengineering MAS.881 / 9.422 / 20.452 (Fall 2008) Medical devices, information technologies, and uses for physics


Task-specific neural mechanisms of memory encoding
Selective engagement of plasticity mechanisms for motor memory storage Differential generalization of oppositely-directed learned changes Distributed plasticity for information encoding Mechanistic interaction of old and new encoded memories


The physics of computation, and the computation of physics
3D mouse interface using electric fields and OpenGL Tabletop NMR quantum computing (Master's thesis) FPGA-based RF tag reader (Master's thesis) Tree-based machine learning for violin physics simulation Control software for the MIT ORCA autonomous submarine
MEMS accelerometer using quantum tunneling A physics-based animation engine 'Everything I learned at MIT'


Photographs from selected adventures
Southwest U.S., 2001 Thailand, 2002 Point Reyes, CA, 2002, 2003 Monterey, CA Mendocino, CA, 2003
San Juan Islands, Seattle, WA, 2003 Patagonia, Chile, 2004 Kauai, Hawaii, 2006

Useful resources
Conversion Factors, Material Properties and Constants


phone 617 324-3085 - fax 617 253-7035 - address Massachusetts Institute of Technology - MIT Media Lab - Room E15-430 - 20 Ames St. - Cambridge, MA 02139

Copyright © 1995-present, Ed Boyden