Tobias Bonhoeffer

Tobias Bonhoeffer is director at the Max-Planck-Institute of Neurobiology and Professor at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany. After receiving his Ph.D. in Biology from the Eberhard-Karls-University of Tübingen and the Max-Planck-Institute of Biological Cybernetics he went on to undertake postdoctoral work with Torsten Wiesel and Amiram Grinvald at Rockefeller University, New York and later on with Wolf Singer at the Max-Planck-Institute of Brain Research, Frankfurt a.M., Germany. Subsequently he was head of an Independent Research Group at the MPI of Neurobiology until he was appointed as a director in 1998.

Dr. Bonhoeffer's main research interests are the fundamental principles of synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus and in the visual system. In many of his studies he has used novel optical techniques to address these questions. Several awards and recognitions of his work include the Ernst Jung Prize of Medicine as well as his election as a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and the Academia Europaea. He serves on various editorial boards and, together with Marc Tessier-Lavigne, edits Current Opinion in Neurobiology. Recently he has been elected as the next Chairperson of the Biomedical Section of the Max-Planck-Society.