Ed Boyden, Ph. D.

Benesse Career Development Professor
Leader, Synthetic Neurobiology Group
Associate Professor, MIT Media Lab
Joint Professor, MIT Dept. of Biological Engineering, MIT Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Investigator, MIT McGovern Institute
Associate Member, MIT Picower Institute
Room E15-421, 20 Ames St.
Cambridge, MA 02139
phone: (617) 324-3085
fax: (617) 253-6285
email: esb@media.mit.edu
web: http://syntheticneurobiology.org
other: http://twitter.com/eboyden3

Curriculum vitae/resume

I lead the Synthetic Neurobiology Group at MIT. We are inventing new tools for analyzing and engineering brain circuits. We are devising technologies for controlling specific neural circuit elements, to understand their causal contribution to normal and pathological neural computations. Our inventions include 'optogenetic' tools we developed for activation and silencing of neural circuits with light, and noninvasive devices using novel physical principles to control neural activity. We are using our inventions to enable systematic approaches to neuroscience, revealing how entire neural circuits operate to generate behavior, and empowering new therapeutic strategies for neurological and psychiatric disorders. Our entrepreneurial approach to tackling clinically and philosophically important problems will hopefully yield a better understanding of the nature of human existence, and enable the ability to engineer improvements thereupon.


IMPORTANT NOTE: The information below describes activities roughly between 1995 and 2008, and will become increasingly obsolete over time. I will only update content on The Synthetic Neurobiology Group web page from now on.
Technologies for controlling neural circuit dynamics (through early 2008)
Lentivirus production protocol for in vivo neural gene targeting 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 (1999-2006)
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 (1995-2000)
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


Photographs from selected adventures (2001-2006)
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
Copyright © 1995-2009, Ed Boyden