معرفی
Nathan Urban is a Professor and currently serves as the Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at Lehigh University. His research focuses on understanding the physiological and circuit mechanisms underlying the functional and computational properties of brain neuronal networks, with particular emphasis on the olfactory system.
Dr. Urban's research interests span multiple areas of neuroscience including:
- Neuronal diversity and functional differences between cell types
- Olfactory navigation and algorithms used by animals to solve odor-based navigation problems
- Neuronal modeling using both statistical and mechanistic approaches
- Neuronal reliability and the role of variability in neural processing
- Olfactory plasticity and experience-dependent changes in neural circuitry
His lab has made significant contributions to understanding how the olfactory system processes information, with research spanning from detailed anatomical and physiological properties of cells and synapses to computational models of neural circuits. Dr. Urban leads the Urban Lab, which has established resources like NeuroElectro.org, a public database of neuronal properties.
Through his extensive publication record spanning decades, Dr. Urban has explored questions about cell types, diversity within cell populations, and the mechanisms underlying olfactory navigation. His recent work has increasingly focused on understanding neural circuit mechanisms in the context of neurodevelopmental disorders, particularly autism spectrum disorders, as evidenced by his publications examining sensory processing abnormalities in ASD models.
Dr. Urban has mentored numerous students and postdocs, providing an environment where they can develop technical and intellectual skills to become successful scientists. His research has been supported by various funding sources including NSF, and he continues to actively contribute to the field with publications in top neuroscience journals through 2024.
