Dr. Ed Boyden is Y. Eva Tan Professor in Neurotechnology at MIT, an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the MIT McGovern Institute, and professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Media Arts and Sciences, and Biological Engineering at MIT. He leads the Synthetic Neurobiology Group, which develops ground truth-oriented tools for analyzing and repairing the brain, and applies them systematically to reveal fundamental mechanisms underlying brain functions, as well as to repair the brain.

One ultimate goal of the group is to create biologically accurate computer simulations of entire brains, starting with small brains like those of worms and fish, and ultimately pointing towards the human brain. The group’s inventions include optogenetic tools, which enable control of neural activity with light; expansion microscopy, which enables ordinary microscopes to do nanoimaging; tools for multiplexed high-speed imaging of living biological signals; strategies to integrate the aforementioned toolsets towards the deconstruction and simulation of entire small brains; noninvasive brain stimulation strategies that may help with conditions ranging from Alzheimer’s to blindness; and new strategies for inexpensively creating 3-D nanotechnology, amongst many others. He co-directs the MIT Center for Neurobiological Engineering, which aims to develop new tools to accelerate neuroscience progress, and the K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics, which pioneers transformational bionic interventions across a broad range of conditions affecting the body and mind. He is a faculty member of the MIT Center for Environmental Health Sciences, Computational & Systems Biology Initiative, and Koch Institute.

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