Göttinger Graduiertenzentrum für Neurowissenschaften, Biophysik und Molekulare Biowissenschaften

Neef, Andreas, Dr.

Head of Neurophysics Laboratory at the Göttingen Campus Institute for Dynamics of Biological Networks

  • 1994-2000: undergraduate and graduate in Physics, University of Jena, Germany
  • 1997-2000: research and graduate student at the Max-Planck research group "Molecular and Cellular Biophysics", Jena
  • 2000: Diploma in Physics, University of Jena, Germany
  • 2000: Visiting scientist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology Cambridge, Great Britain
  • 2001-2004: PhD student at the institute for biological information processing in the research centre Jülich
  • 2004: PhD in Biochemistry (Dr.rer.nat), University Cologne
  • 2004-2005: Postdoctoral fellow at the research centre Juelich
  • 2005-2006: Postdoctoral fellow at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience (BCCN), Göttingen
  • 2006-2013: Bernstein fellow at the BCCN and BFNT Göttingen
  • 2013-2019: Group leader "Biophysics of neural computation" at the BCCN Göttingen
  • since 2019: Head of Neurophysics Laboratory at the Göttingen Campus Institute for Dynamics of Biological Networks



Major Research Interests
My research covers various fields of neuroscience and ion channel biophysics. The laboratory Neurophysics is a bridge between physics and neuroscience. We use theoretical models and precision measurements of biophysical properties to understand how molecular and cellular properties determine performance of information encoding in neurons and networks. Such key properties can reside in synapses (Holt et al. 2004, Neef et al. 2007) or the axon initial segment (Lazarov et al. 2018, Revah et al. 2019). Sometimes, we develop new experimental or theoretical tools to enable discoveries (e.g. Neef et al. 2007, Agudelo-Toro and Neef 2014, Yang et al. 2015, Zhang et al. 2024). In collaboration with colleagues and friends I also venture beyond the interface of biophysics and neuroscience and apply precise measurements and theoretical analysis to understand single molecule diffusion, human brain stimulation or gender bias in scientific publishing (Weiß et al. 2013, Rotem et al. 2014, Helmer et al. 2017). Most recently, my interest moved to the evolution of neural systems and we began to study the nervous system of various animals from ctenophores and octopus to primates.

Homepage Department/Research Group
https://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/653379.html

ORCID: 0000-0003-4445-7478