Wellcome Trust Principal Fellowship award to explore neural coding with the tripartite synapse

Professor Dmitri Rusakov, of the Institute of Neurology's Department of Clinical and Experimental Epilepsy, has been awarded a Wellcome Trust Principal Fellowship, the top personal investigator award from the Trust. It provides £2.8M for five years (renewable) to explore "Neural coding with the tripartite synapse". 

This research line focuses on the newly emerged roles of "brain glue", electrically passive astroglial cells, in the processing and storage of information in the mammalian brain. To understand how astroglia contribute to neural communication, the group will combine two-photon excitation microscopy in intact brain tissue with optogenetic approaches and high-end biophysical simulations involving cloud computing.

Read more:

Wellcome Trust: http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/Funding/Biomedical-science/Funding-schemes/Fellowships/Principal-research-fellowships/

Dmitri Rusakov's lab page