Professor Gero Miesenboeck

Professorial Fellow
Subject Area: Medicine and Physiological Sciences

Email: remove.me.gero.miesenboeck@dpag.ox.ac.uk
Tel: +44-(0)1865-282261

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Academic Background

Gero Miesenböck is Waynflete Professor of Physiology. A native of Austria, he received his M.D. from the University of Innsbruck in 1993. Before coming to Oxford in 2007, he spent more than a decade in the United States, holding faculty appointments at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and at Yale University.

Undergraduate Teaching

Neuroscience

Research Interests

Miesenböck is the principal architect of the emerging field of "optogenetics"—genetic strategies for observing and controlling the function of brain circuits with light. He uses these optical approaches to read and change the minds of fruit flies; his current research focuses on the structure and dynamics of circuits involved in sensory processing, memory, action selection, and motor pattern generation.

Selected Publications

Miesenböck, G. (2009) The optogenetic catechism. Science 326: 395-399.

Claridge-Chang, A., R.D. Roorda, E. Vrontou, L. Sjulson, H. Li, J. Hirsh and G. Miesenböck (2009) Writing memories with light-addressable reinforcement circuitry. Cell 139: 405-415.

Miesenböck, G. (2008) Lighting up the brain. Scientific American 299: October 2008, 52-59.

Clyne, J.D., and G. Miesenböck (2008) Sex-specific control and tuning of the pattern generator for courtship song in Drosophila. Cell 133: 354-363.

Shang, Y., A. Claridge-Chang, L. Sjulson, M. Pypaert and G. Miesenböck (2007) Excitatory local circuits and their implications for olfactory processing in the fly antennal lobe. Cell 128: 601-612.