Richard Gerkin

Richard Gerkin is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences at Arizona State University. His research focuses on understanding how olfactory perception, learning, and behavior are represented in the brain, with a particular emphasis on human olfactory psychophysics and neural activity during olfactory tasks. He also develops tools and standards for neuroinformatics, including software to facilitate the analysis and sharing of neuroscience models and data.

Education: B.S. from Stanford University and Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

Research Interests: Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Neurobiology, Mathematical Biology, Neuroinformatics, Software Engineering, and Statistics. His work bridges experimental neuroscience and computational modeling, with applications in olfactory dysfunction (e.g., in COVID-19) and sensory system design.

Courses Taught: BIO 493 (Honors Thesis), BIO 495 (Undergraduate Research), and BIO 496 (Undergraduate Thesis), reflecting his commitment to mentoring student researchers.

Labs/Teams: His research group develops open-source tools like Pyrfume and contributes to projects such as NeuroML-DB, advancing reproducibility and collaboration in neuroscience.