As part of the newly launched NOMIS Fellowship Program at IST Austria, the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) and the NOMIS Foundation have appointed the program’s first NOMIS Fellow, Christopher Currin. By training exceptional postdoctoral scientists in interdisciplinary basic research, this unique fellowship program paves the way for future thought leaders.
As a NOMIS Fellow, Currin will use software engineering, machine learning and computational models to study the emerging dynamics of human neural networks from healthy subjects as well as people with epilepsy and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). His project, Unlocking Crucial Cortical Connections in Human Neural Dynamics for Health and Disorder, in collaboration with the Vogels lab, will utilize recordings from high-density multi-electrode arrays (HD-MEAs), monitoring thousands of neurons simultaneously from human-induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived cultures that are developed in the Novarino lab at IST Austria. Currin holds a PhD in neuroscience from the University of Cape Town (South Africa).
The NOMIS Fellowship Program at IST Austria
The NOMIS Fellowship Program at IST Austria is designed to provide excellent postdoctoral researchers the freedom to pursue big questions at the intersection of two or more scientific disciplines in a collaborative research environment, while also providing outstanding scientific mentorship from proven leaders in their respective fields. IST Austria offers an enabling environment; state-of-the-art resources; dedicated mentorship from established, high-caliber scientists; and scientific leadership training. Fellowships span a range of fields, including biology, neuroscience, physics, chemistry, computer science and mathematics. For more information or to apply to the NOMIS Fellowship Program at IST Austria, please visit IST Austria’s Postdocs page.
About IST Austria
IST Austria is a PhD-granting research institution located in Klosterneuburg, 18 km from the center of Vienna, Austria. Inaugurated in 2009, the Institute is dedicated to basic research in the natural and mathematical sciences. IST Austria employs professors on a tenure-track system, postdoctoral fellows and doctoral students. While dedicated to the principle of curiosity-driven research, the Institute owns the rights to all scientific discoveries and is committed to promoting their use. The first president of IST Austria is Thomas A. Henzinger, a leading computer scientist and former professor at the University of California in Berkeley, USA, and the EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland. The graduate school of IST Austria offers fully funded PhD positions to highly qualified candidates with a bachelor’s or master’s degree in biology, neuroscience, mathematics, computer science, physics and related areas.
