Hi, welcome to my personal home page. I am a University Professor in the Molecular Neuroscience Department and the founding Director of the Center for Neural Informatics, Structure, & Plasticity of the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason University. This page describes my scientific activity and links to some of the sites related to my professional interests. If you want to know more about (the unofficial) me, visit my
I
am the head of the Computational Neuroanatomy
Group at the Krasnow Institute.
Our main effort is to model
neuronal morphology (the "shape" of brain cells) and its influence on
network connectivity and electrophysiological activity. One of the
products of our group is L-Neuron, a
modeling tool that generates and describes realistic neurons. Among the
current research
projects of the Computational
Neuroanatomy Group are anatomically
plausible neural networks and autobiographic memory. Here is a
Mason Gazette coverage of my
research. For a detailed description
of this
field, see this review article. I edited a scientific book that defines
Computational Neuroanatomy in broad terms.
My main long-term scientific and philosophical goal consists in establishing a working model for the highest cognitive functions such as human consciosuness. My current consciousness model is fundamentally based on associative learning. If you want to download the zipped poscript version of one of my papers on the subject, click here. If you think that consciousness is and will forever remain a mystery that science cannot solve, see my response. Finally, if you wonder what neuroanatomy has to do with consciousness, you might find an answer here.
On
the experimental side, my research involvement is primarily in
neuroanatomy, but my scientific background is
biochemistry. As a researcher at the former
Laboratory of Adaptive Systems of the N.I.H.,
I worked on the structural characterization of a learning-associated
neuronal protein, Calexcitin, and on the Prion protein, the infective
agent of Mad Cow disease. I received my M.Sc. (Laurea) from the University of Pisa
(yes, the leaning tower) and my Ph.D. from
the Scuola Normale Superiore, in
Italy, where I investigated drug-protein binding.
If you are interested in my research, you can find my CV with a list of publications here.
I
enjoy
teaching graduate courses and I welcome
Neuroscience, Psychology, Bioinformatics,
Biology, and Information Technology students
interested in neuroinformatics and computational neuroanatomy to attend
my classes. All
students in the greater Washington DC area who wish to visit my Krasnow
laboratory are strongly encouraged to contact
me (thesis slots available!).
Past courses:
PRESENT COURSE
(Spring 2010):
Some of my
favorite scientific links:
...more
non-scientific links on my
Do you want to send me an email? Do
it! 
