Nathalie Rochefort

Nathalie Rochefort is a Professor of Visual Neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh, studying the neural basis of visual perception. As an undergraduate, she studied Biology and Epistemology in Paris. She then obtained a European PhD in Neuroscience from the University Paris-VI and the Ruhr-Universität-Bochum and did her post-doctoral training at the Technical University in Munich. Her work during her PhD and post-doctoral training has contributed to a new understanding of how neurons acquire their functional properties in the visual cortex. This work also led to the development of in vivo two-photon calcium imaging, a powerful technique now widely used by neuroscientists. Her research group focuses on how brain neuronal circuits process visual information, and how experience durably modifies the activity of these circuits in health and disease. She has won various honours and grants including the prestigious Bernard Katz Lecture Award, the Schilling Research Award (German Neuroscience Society), the Sir Henry Dale fellowship (Wellcome Trust and Royal Society), the EMBO Young Investigator award and the ERC Consolidator grant.