The Speakers

Ikerbasque Research Associate, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Biofisika Institute

Research Associate, Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC)

Ignacio Arganda-Carreras is an Ikerbasque Research Associate at the Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) and also an affiliate of the Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC). He is one of the original developers of Fiji, one of the most popular open-source image processing software in the world, and widely used by the bio-image analysis community. His lab is focused on image processing and machine learning, especially in developing open-source computer vision methods for biomedical images.

Director of Research, Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Inserm and Aix-Marseille University, Marseille, France

Editor in Chief of eNeuro

Christophe Bernard is Director of Research at the Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Inserm U1106, in Marseilles, France. He obtained a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Paris VI university, did his postdoc at Southampton university, and a sabbatical In Houston (Baylor). His main interest is to understand brain dynamics in health and disease, with a focus on epilepsy (Michael Prize). He participated in the development of organic technologies to record and control brain activity (Felix Innovation Prize) and in The Virtual Mouse Brain (a platform that allows the virtualization of individual mouse brain to study whole brain dynamics in silico). He acts as a reviewing editor for Science Advances, and formerly for Science and Journal of Neuroscience. He created and is the Editor in Chief of eNeuro, the online open access journal of the Society for Neuroscience. eNeuro is designed to serve and educate the community, promoting reproducibility, publishing negative results, and sensitizing scientists to open science and better data interpretation with a focus on statistics and experimental bias.

Full Professor at Ikerbasque, Computational Neuroimaging Lab, BioBizkaia Health Research Institute, Hospital Universitario Cruces, Barakaldo, Spain

Dr. Jesus M. Cortes, Full Professor at Ikerbasque and head of the Computational Neuroimaging Laboratory at the BioBizkaia Health Research Institute, has  an interdisciplinary background in the field of neuroscience, integrating brain connectivity, neuroimaging, clinical and neurophysiological data, and advanced techniques in machine learning and Artificial Intelligence. Dr. Cortes has secured funding exceeding 8.10 million EUR and has led 13 of the 35 research projects in which it has been involved. Dr. Cortes has published 115 scientific articles, 90% of which are ranked in the first quartile of the Journal Citation Reports (JCR Q1). He has supervised over 30 postgraduate students and delivered 102 scientific talks. His commitment to excellence and professional development is internationally recognized, with teaching contributions at 24 universities across six different countries. Awarded for his academic excellence and interdisciplinary approach, Dr. Cortes has received distinctions such as the "Premio Extraordinario de Doctorado" , Fulbright Fellow, EPSRC Fellow, and Ramón y Cajal Researcher. His recent appointment as Director of R+D in the cognitive stimulation platform NeuronUP has enabled the development of pioneering data-driven strategies for personalizing and optimizing neurocognitive interventions.

Scientist, Krembil Research Institute, University Health Network, Toronto, Canada 

Assistant Professor, Department of Physiology, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

Scientific Associate, Basque Center for Applied Mathematics, Bilbao, Spain

Adjunct Professor, Department of Neurosciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of the Basque Country, Leioa, Spain

Dr. Maurizio De Pitta is a computational neuroscientist specializing in studying neuron-glial interactions. He is the principal investigator at the Neuron-Glial Interaction Lab at the Krembil Research Institute in Toronto (Canada) and holds an Assistant Professor position at the University of Toronto's Department of Physiology, Temerty Faculty of Medicine. He also has affiliations with the Basque Center for Applied Mathematics and the University of the Basque Country in Spain. Dr. De Pitta earned his Ph.D. in Computational Biology from Tel Aviv University and conducted postdoctoral research in Theoretical Neurosciences at The University of Chicago. His research interests range from models of neuron-glial physiology in health and disease in cognition and age-related dementia, using multiple quantitative approaches borrowed from genomics, physics, statistics, and computer science. Dr De Pitta is also a principal investigator in the European H2020 ASTROTECH Consortium to develop forefront glial—brain interfaces and co-founder of the Spanish Clinical System Neuroscience Network, CliSyNe.

Ikerbasque Research Fellow, Biofisika Institute (CSIC-UPV/EHU), Leioa, Spain

Dmitry Sinelshchikov is an Ikerbasque Research Fellow at the Biofisika Institute (CSIC-UPV/EHU) (IBF) working in dynamical systems and ordinary differential equations with applications to biophysics, physics and medicine. Dmitry obtained his PhD in Mathematics and Physics (2010) from Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (MEPhI). After that Dmitry consequently worked from 2010 to 2019 as an Assistant Professor, Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor at MEPhI. During this period, his research was focused on analytical theory of differential equations and dynamical systems applied to fluid dynamics. Dmitry’s works on integrability of Li\'enard-type equations received recognition from the Russian Academy of Sciences and he was awarded the gold medal for young scientists in 2017. In 2019 Dmitry joined the HSE University as an Associate Professor, where he pursued his independent research line in integrability of dynamical systems and applied nonlinear dynamics. Since 2022 Dmitry is working in Spain at the IBF. In 2023 Dmitry was awarded simultaneously the Beatriz Galindo and Ikerbasque Research Fellow grants, of which he accepted the latter to continue working in biophysical applications of dynamical systems in a direct collaboration with experimental groups at the IBF. 

Senior research assistant, Center for Brain and Cognition, Dept. of Information and Communication Technologies, Pompeu Fabra University

Post-doctoral Research Assistant and Project Manager, The Human Brain Project

Gorka Zamora-López studied theoretical physics at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Spain, and biophysics at the University of Oulu, Finland. During his PhD at the University of Potsdam he began an interdisciplinary journey at the cross-road between complex networks, neuroscience and dynamical systems, discovering the rich-club organization of brain connectomes in early maps of white matter. Since 2013, he has been a researcher at the Center for Brain and Cognition (CBC) of the Pompeu Fabra University, solving several methological matters for (brain) connectivity, the understanding of the structure-function relation in the brain's organization and delving into clinical research such as disorders of consciousness. As part of the Human Brain Project, for seven years, he combined daily research with the coordination of technological solutions for scientific computational pipelines.