Principal Investigator

David Kleinfeld

David Kleinfeld, Ph.D.


(In matters of style,
swim with the current.
In matters of principle,
stand like a rock.*)

(To be creative you've
got to be unsociable and
tight-assed. ... You're
self-sufficient and you
stay focused.**)

(Be so good they can’t
ignore you.***)


Education

1984 The Neurobiology Summer School, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA.
1984 Doctor of Philosophy in Physics, University of California at San Diego. Dissertation: On the Dynamics of Electron Transfer in Photosynthetic Reaction Centers (with the late Prof. George Feher).
1977 Master of Science, Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
1976 Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering (High Honors), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Senior Thesis: Growth of Ionization Tracts in Pulsed Microwave Fields.
1971 Abraham Lincoln High School, Brooklyn, NY.

New Years Eve 1985

Primary Academic Position

2014 onward Distinguished Professor, UCSD
2011 onward Professor of Neurobiology, UCSD.
1998 onward Professor of Physics, UCSD.
1996 - 1998 Associate Professor of Physics, UCSD.
1984 - 1985 Post-doctoral Fellow, UCSD.

Secondary Academic Positions

2021 - 2026 Adjunct Faculty, Department of Biomedical Science and Engineering, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), South Korea.
2019 - 2027 Adjunct Faculty, The Salk Institute, La Jolla.
2016 onward Affiliated Faculty, Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program, UCSD.
2014 - 2024 Dr. George Feher Experimental Biophysics Endowed Chair, UCSD.
2008 onward Senior Fellow, Crick-Jacobs Center for Theoretical & Computational Biology, The Salk Institute, La Jolla.
1997 onward Affiliated Faculty, Graduate Neurosciences Program, UCSD.
(Head of Computational Neuroscience Specialization, 2014 to present)

Industrial Positions

2019-2023 Scientific Advisory Board, Clarapath, NYC.
1986 - 1995 Member of the Technical Staff, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill.
1985 Postdoctoral Member of the Technical Staff, AT&T Bell Laboratories.
1974 Accelerator Division (w/ Dr. Robert L Kustom), Argonne National Laboratories.

Imaging Summer School 2006

Postgraduate School Positions

2018 - 2019 Faculty, "Building and Mining Brain Cell Atlases and Connectomes", Cold Spring Harbor Asia, Suzhou.
2017 Faculty, "The Neural Basis of Brain Information Processing and Behavior: Synapses, Cells, Circuits", Sino-Danish Center for Education and Research, Beijing.
2017 Faculty, "Neural Data Analysis", Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, NY.
2017 Faculty, "Transylvanian Experimental Neuroscience Summer School", Pike Lake, Romania.
2016, 2021 Faculty, "Workshop on Computational Brain Research", Center for Computational Brain Research, IIT Madras, India.
2013 Faculty, "Vasculata", North American Vascular Biology Organization training camp, San Diego, CA.
2012, 2015 Faculty, "Frontiers in Neurophotonics Summer School", Quebec City, Canada.
2011 Faculty, "Circuits and Connectivity", Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, NY.
2010 Faculty, "Circuit and Molecular Architecture of the Vertebrate Brain" Summer Workshop, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, NY.
2008 Faculty, Society for Neuroscience Short Course on "Neural Signal Processing: Quantitative Analysis of Neural Activity", DC.
2007 Visiting faculty, "Fifth Summer School on Computational Neuroscience", Goettingen.
2007 - 2012 Co-Director, "Neuroinformatics Summer School" (with Prof. Emery Brown and Dr. Partha Mitra), Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA.
2003 - 2007 Co-Director, "Imaging Structure & Function in the Nervous System" Summer School (with Profs. Florian Engert, Fritjof Helmchen, Mark Huebener, Timothy Murphy and Jack Waters), Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, NY.
2003, 2004,
2008 - 2015
Visiting Faculty, "Methods in Computational Neuroscience" Summer School, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA.
2003 Lecturer, Summer School in Theoretical Physics, Les Houches, France (Prof. David Golomb covered).
2002 - 2006 Faculty and Co-Founder (with Prof. Emery Brown and Dr. Partha Mitra), "Neuroinformatics Summer School", Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA.
2001 Co-organizer, “Pedagogical Workshop on Neural Networks” (w/ Profs. Sebastian Seung & Misha Tsodyks), Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, UC Santa Barbara.
2000 Lecturer, “Neurobiology of the Leech”, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA.
1998 - 2002,
2008, 2011, 2013
Visiting Faculty, "Imaging Structure & Function in the Nervous System", Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, NY.
1993 - 1997 Co-Director, "Methods in Computational Neuroscience" Summer School, (with Prof. David Tank), Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA.

MCN 1997

Honors

2020 UCSD Academic Senate Distinguished Research Award in Science & Engineering
2016 NIH / NINDS Research Program Award
2015 Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
2012 Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science
2010 NIH Director's Pioneer Award
1999 David and Lucile Packard Foundation Interdisciplinary Science Award
1976 Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society

Satish Iyenger, Emery Brown and David

Named/Profiled Lectures

2023 Plenary Lecture, SPIE International, Jeju
2022 Muldoon Distinguished Lectureship, Augusta University
2019 Plenary Lecture, European Stroke Science Workshop, Garmisch-Partenkirchen
2018 Presidential Lecture, World Congress for Microcirculation, Vancouver
2015 Totman Lecture, University of Vermont
2015 Schueler Lecture, Tulane University
2014 Presidential Lecture, Microcirculation Society, San Diego
2011 Leica Scientific Forum Lecturer, Berlin / Heidelberg / Munich
2010 Heller Lecturer, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem
2008 Nobel Minisymposium, Stockholm
2006 Plenary Lecture, Japanese Association of Cardiovascular Pharmacology, Tokyo

Tsinghua_University_2018

Professional Activity

2023 - 2027 Member, University of California Retirement System (UCRS) Advisory Board (vice-Chair AY 2024/25; Chair AY 2025/26).
2023 - 2028 External Advisory Member, Leducq Foundation International Networks of Excellence Program.
2021 - 2026 External Advisory Member, NSF Frontier Center, University of Texas, Dallas.
2020 - 2021 UC San Diego Faculty Leadership Academy.
2018 - 2022 External Advisory Board, NINDS BRAIN U19 Team-Research Brain Research Program.
2018 onward Scientific Advisory Board, Neuroelectronics Research Flanders (NERF), Leuven.
2017 - 2018 Senior Scientific Advisor, National Center for Brain Mapping, Argonne National Laboratory.
2015 - 2016 Neurobiology Advisory Committee, U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation.
2014 - 2020 Board of Reviewing Editors, eLIFE.
2011 - 2014 Computational Neuroscience Advisory Board (headed by Prof. Adrienne Fairhall), University of Washington, Seattle.
2009 onward International Steering Committee, Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences (headed by Prof. Bert Sakmann; then Prof. Joshua Sanes), Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
2008 Group leader, NINDS workshop, “Issues of Sensorimotor Integration in Neural Prosthesis”, DC.
2007 - 2011 Sensorimotor Integration Study Section, NIH Center for Scientific Review.
2007 - 2008 Change Control Board, NIH Neuroimaging Informatics Tools and Resources Clearinghouse (represented through the late Dr. Quoc-Thang Nguyen).
2002 External Advisory Committee, Mathematical Biosciences Institute, Ohio State University.
1993 Scientific Advisory Board, Reuben H. Fleet Space and Science Museum, San Diego, CA.

SPIE_meeting_Jeju_November_2023

Meeting Organization

2025 Co-Organizer, "Neurophysics of Active Sensing" (proposed with Profs. Matthieu Louis, Pavan Ramdya, Tatyana Sharpee and Julie Simpson), Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, UCSB.
2022 Session chair (with Prof. Fan Wang), "Barrels 2022" (organized by Prof. Carl Petersen), EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland
2014, 2018, 2022 - 2025 Co-Organizer, "Brain Blood Fest" (with Prof. Anna Devor), La Jolla, CA, Brookline, MA, and other venues.
2018 Co-Organizer, "George Feher: Commenorating a life in biophysics" (with Profs. James Allen, Mel Okamura and Wolfgang Lubitz), UCSD.
2018 Co-Organizer, "Recording, analyzing, manipulating, interpretting and modeling whole brain activity" (with Drs. Misha Ahrens, Tatyana Sharpee and Misha Tsodyks), Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, UCSB.
2018 Co-Organizer, "Brains storming about the brain stem" (with Profs. Martin Deschênes, Jack Feldman and Terrence Sejnowski), Crick-Jacobs Center for Theoretical & Computational Biology, Salk Institute, CA.
2017 Co-Organizer, Workshop on "Physical limits to measurements in neurobiology" (with Drs. Tim Harris and Partha Mitra), HHMI Janelia Research Center, VA.
2017 Co-Organizer, "Neural basis of active sensation and navigation" (with Prof. Jill Leutgeb and Dr. Karel Svoboda), HHMI Janelia Research Center, VA.
2013 Scientific program committee, "Sensory systems and coding" (with Profs. Brent Doiron, Adrienne Fairhall and John Rinzel), Mathematical Biosciences Institute, Ohio State University.
2013 Co-Organizer, "The rodent vibrissa system" (with Profs. Alison Barth, Mitra Hartmann and Dr. Karel Svoboda), HHMI Janelia Research Center, VA.
2011 Symposium Co-Organizer, “Automated histology in the pursuit of connectomes” (with Dr. Bert Sakmann), Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting, DC.
2011 Session chair, "Biophysics of Neural Circuits and Synapses" (with Profs. Guo-Qiang Bi and H. Benjamin Peng), 17th International Biophysics Congress, Beijing, China
2011 Co-Organizer, "Two-photon microscopy: The next 6x1023 femtoseconds" (with Drs. Na Ji and Karel Svoboda), HHMI Janelia Research Center, VA.
2010 Co-Organizer, "Emerging Techniques in Neuroscience" Research Program (with Prof. Adrienne Fairhall and Dr. Fred Wolf), Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, UCSB.
2010 Session chair, "Active Sensing", Gordon Research Conference on Sensory Coding and the Natural Environment", Bates College, ME.
2010 Co-Organizer, "The neural basis of whisker-based tactile sensation" (with Prof. Mitra Hartmann and Dr. Karel Svoboda), HHMI Janelia Research Center, VA.
2007 Symposium Organizer, "Cortical blood flow dynamics in normal and dysfunctional states", Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA.
2006 Co-Organizer, "Dynamical Neuroscience XIV", National Institute for Mental Health Satellite Symposium, (with Drs. Dennis Glanzman and Partha Mitra and Profs. Emery Brown and Rob Kass), Atlanta Convention Center.
2004-2025 Program Committee, "Barrels" Meeting, a Society for Neuroscience satellite meeting.
2004 Program Committee, "Optical Techniques in Neuroscience", OSA Topical Meeting, Miami Beach, FL.
2003 Steering Committee, "Bio Conference II", American Physical Society, San Diego, CA.
2003 Symposium Organizer, "Motor control and adaptation in active sensation", Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA.
2003 Program Committee, "Commercial and Biomedical Applications of Ultrafast Lasers", Photonics West, San Jose Convention Center, CA.
2001 Co-Organizer, (Kavli) Institute for Theoretical Physics program on "Dynamics of Neural Networks: From Biophysics to Behavior" (w/ HS Seung & M Tsodyks), UC Santa Barbara.
2001 Co-Organizer, "Dynamical Neuroscience IX", National Institute for Mental Health Satellite Symposium, (with Dr. Dennis Glanzman and Profs. Sebastian Seung and Misha Tsodyks), San Diego Convention Center.
1997 - 2000 Co-Organizer, Workgroup on "Analysis of Neural Data" (with Dr. Partha Mitra), Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA.

David Stewart and David Kleinfeld, CSHL 2014

Long ago (and far away)****

MBL Neurobiology course directed by Gerry Fishbach, John Hildebrand and Tom Reese

David, Eric Gullikson and Charlie Hamaker at Goddard Divide 1981

L: David at Martha Lake on the way to Mount Goddard, Sequoia, 1983, R: Herve lead, David second, Keith last, on Diamond Dogs, Joshua Tree, 1979

Marian and David, ca 1970

1875 map of Coney Island, Brighton Beach, Manhattan Beach, and part of Sheepshead Bay

David, ca 1967

(And if my Shadow is all that survived, I'm still alive.*****)

*Attributed to Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

**Bob Dylan (1941) in Wall Street Journal interview of 24 December 2022

***Calvin C. Newport (1982)

****Ira Gershwin (1896-1963)

*****Meat Loaf (Michael Lee Aday; 1947-2022) in Bat Out of Hell III