Thomas Kreuz

I am a computational neuroscientist with a physics background (Google Scholar profile). My main field of interest is the analysis of electrophysiological data such as EEG and neuronal spike trains. Recently, I have mostly been working on neuronal population coding. Before this, a lot of my efforts have gone into the development of SPIKY, a graphical user interface (Matlab) designed to monitor spike train synchrony. Subsequently I was also involved in the creation of the complementary software packages PySpike (Python library) and cSPIKE (Matlab library).

Since 2010 I am on a permanent position as "Primo Ricercatore" (Senior Researcher, equivalent to an Associate Professor) at the Institute of Complex Systems (ISC) within the National Research Council (CNR) in Florence, Italy, where I am one of two PIs in the Computational Neuroscience Lab. I am a co-founder of the joint Israeli-Italian Laboratory for Neuroscience (established in 2010). Before I was also a principal investigator in the Marie Curie European Joint Doctorate (EJD) program 'Complex Oscillatory Systems: Modeling and Analysis (COSMOS)' (2015-2019) and a member of the Marie Curie Initial Training Network (ITN) 'Neural Engineering Transformative Technologies (NETT)' (2012-2015).

Previously I was an EU Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellow (IOF). This fellowship lasted for three years. For the first two years (the outgoing phase) I was at the Institute of Nonlinear Science (INLS, Director: Henry D.I. Abarbanel) at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), Ca, USA, while for the final year (the reintegration phase) I returned to the Institute of Complex Systems in Florence. The main focus was on the development of methods to quantify the synchrony between two or more spike trains (Research-Sync). This work has lead to the proposals of the ISI- and the SPIKE-distance (for reprints and Matlab Source codes: Source Code).

In the two years before I was an EU Marie Curie Intra-European Fellow (IEF) at the Institute of Complex Systems. During this time I dealt with simulations of neuronal models under the influence of noise (Research-CR). These simulations were combined with the analysis of single neuron recordings that we got from the INLS lab in San Diego.

Before that I worked at the John von Neumann Institute of Computing (NIC) at the Research Center Juelich, Germany (Director: Peter Grassberger) where I obtained my PhD in physics in 2003 (awarded by the University of Wuppertal, Germany). This work involved both nonlinear dynamics and nonlinear time series analysis, particular attention was paid to the synchronization between two time series (Research-Sync).

During this time I was also associated with the Neurophysics group (Head: Klaus Lehnertz) at the Department of Epileptology at the University of Bonn, Germany (Director: Christian E. Elger). There I applied  methods of nonlinear time series analysis to the EEG of epilepsy patients. The main focus of interest was the prediction of epileptic seizures and its statistical validation (Research-EEG).

Before that I studied Physics (and just a bit of medicine) at the Universities of Bonn, Germany, and Edinburgh, Scotland.