Nikos K. Logothetis

(MPIK Tübingen)

Nikos K. Logothetis is director of the department Physiology of Cognitive Processes at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics (MPIBC), in Tübingen, Germany. He is also a faculty member at the Victoria University of Manchester in England, and Honorary Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Tübingen. In addition to his primary affiliations, since 1992 he is Adjunct Professor of Neurobiology at the Salk Institute in San Diego, Adjunct Professor of Ophthalmology at the BCM, Adjunct Professor in the Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems at the Boston University, Massachusetts, and Adjunct Professor in the Medical University in Athens, Greece.

Nikos received a B.S. in mathematics from the University of Athens, a B.S. in biology from the University of Thessaloniki, and his Ph.D. in human neurobiology from the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich. In 1985 he moved to the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department of M.I.T., where he initially worked as a postdoctoral fellow and later as Research Scientist.  In 1990 he joined the faculty of the Division of Neuroscience at the Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), and seven years later he moved to the MPIBC to continue his research, including studies of the physiological mechanisms of visual cognition, auditory perception and multisensory integration, as well as investigations of plasticity and neuromodulation. Parallel to this ongoing basic research, NKL has been developing a number of multidisciplinary methods, e.g. technologies combining electrophysiology, direct electrical or optical stimulation and pharmacology with structural and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, which permit temporally and spatially multiscale studies of neural networks in non-human primates and rodents. His research yielded over 400 peer reviewed publications, receiving over 52,000 citations.

Nikos is a member of the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina, of the Rodin Remediation Academy, Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States. He is recipient of the DeBakey Award for Excellence in Science, the Golden Brain Award of the Minerva Foundation, the 2003 Louis-Jeantet Prize of Medicine, the 2004 Zülch-Prize for Neuroscience, the 2007 IPSEN Prize for Neuronal Plasticity, the 2008 Alden Spencer Award of Columbia University, New York and the Academy of Athens Award 2016 for his essential work in the field of Neuroscience. In April 2019 was awarded the highest honorary academic title, that of Distinguished Honorary Professor and Doctorate in the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in Greece.