Gero Miesenbock
Gero Miesenböck is Waynflete Professor of Physiology and Director of the Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Magdalen College. A native of Austria, he received his M.D. from the University of Innsbruck and undertook postdoctoral training with James Rothman. Before coming to Oxford, he held faculty appointments at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Yale University. Miesenböck originated the field now known as optogenetics. He was the first scientist to modify nerve cells genetically so that their electrical activity could be controlled with light. This involved inserting DNA for light-responsive opsin proteins into the cells. Miesenböck used similar genetic modifications to breed animals whose brains contained light-responsive nerve cells integrated into their circuitry, and was the first to demonstrate that the behavior of these animals could be remote-controlled. In 2012 Miesenböck was awarded the InBev-Baillet Latour International Health Prize for "pioneering optogenetic approaches to manipulate neuronal activity and to control animal behaviour." In 2013 he shared The Brain Prize with Ernst Bamberg, Ed Boyden, Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel, and the Jacob Heskel Gabbay Award in Biotechnology and Medicine with Boyden and Deisseroth. The principle of optogenetic control established by Miesenböck has been widely adopted, generalized to other biological systems, and technically improved. Most of Miesenböck's work continues to be done in fruit flies, where it is possible to gain detailed insight into molecular, cellular and physiological mechanisms of brain function that may relate to human health.