Winfried Denk

Winfried Denk is a Director at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence and an Adjunct Professor of Physics at the University of Heidelberg. He leads the research group Electrons - Photons - Neurons, focusing on advanced optical and electron microscopy techniques for connectomics and neural circuit analysis.

• PhD in Physics (1990) from Cornell University
• Postdoctoral Fellow at IBM Research Lab (Rueschlikon)
• Independent Researcher at Bell Laboratories
• Director at Max Planck Institute for Medical Research (1999-2011)
• Senior Fellow at HHMI Janelia Farm Research Campus (2009-present)

His research involves

• Developing two-photon microscopy for functional neural imaging
• Inventing Serial Block-Face Scanning Electron Microscopy for 3D brain mapping
• Advancing flood-filling networks for automated neuron reconstruction
• Investigating direction selectivity in retinal circuits

Scientific honors include

• Kavli Prize in Neuroscience (2012)
• Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize (2003)
• Foreign Associate of the NAS (2013)
• Multiple EMBO and Max Planck Society affiliations