Matteo Carandini

Prof. Matteo Carandini is the GlaxoSmithKline/Fight for Sight Professor of Visual Neuroscience at University College London's Institute of Ophthalmology. He leads the Cortexlab, a collaborative research group jointly with Prof. Kenneth Harris, focusing on understanding how populations of neurons combine sensory and internal signals to guide action. His laboratory employs advanced techniques including neuromics, Neuropixels high-count electrodes, optogenetics, multiphoton imaging, behavioral conditioning, and virtual reality simulation, primarily working with the mouse brain.

Carandini received his Laurea in Mathematics from Universita di Roma (1990) and a PhD in Neural Science from New York University (1996). He completed postdoctoral fellowships at Northwestern University and New York University before establishing his laboratory at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (1998), then moving to the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute in San Francisco (2002), and finally to UCL (2007). His academic positions include Assistant Professor at University of Zurich and ETH Zurich (2000-2002), Senior Scientist at Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute (2005-2008), and Professor at UCL Institute of Ophthalmology (2007-present).

His research spans multiple areas of neuroscience with a particular focus on visual processing, neural population coding, and the computational principles underlying sensory-motor transformations. Carandini's work integrates experimental approaches with computational analysis to decode how large populations of neurons represent information. Recent publications demonstrate his lab's leadership in developing and applying cutting-edge neurotechnologies like Neuropixels probes for high-density neural recordings across the brain.

His laboratory is funded by prestigious organizations including the Wellcome Trust, Simons Foundation, European Research Council, and UK's Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. The Cortexlab maintains a collaborative, multidisciplinary environment with expertise spanning biology, psychology, mathematics, and physics. The team includes research fellows, PhD students, technicians, and software developers working together on diverse projects in systems, computational, cognitive, behavioral, and circuits neuroscience.