Marcus Kaiser obtained a MSc (Biology, 2002) from Ruhr-University Bochum and a PhD (Computational Neuroscience, 2005) from Jacobs University Bremen. Directly after his PhD he joined Newcastle University as RCUK Academic Fellow for Complex Neural Systems. He has worked on organization, development, and robustness of cortical and neuronal as well as of metabolic and protein-protein interaction networks. He is initiator and deputy director of the Wellcome Trust 4-year PhD programme 'Systems Neuroscience: From Networks to Behaviour' and member of the Institute of Neuroscience management board. In addition, he is member of the EPSRC funded network 'Mathematical Neuroscience' and member of the editorial boards of the journal 'Frontiers in Neuroinformatics' and PLoS ONE.


Research areas (and topics for prospective PhD students):
-Simulating the spreading of activity in hierarchical clustered networks to understand the spreading of epileptic seizures
-Discovering constraints for spatial and topological organization of neural systems
-Simulating the development of neural networks in order to understand developmental diseases
-Studying mechanisms of recovery after failure in neuronal and artificial information processing networks

For more information see the personal website www.biological-networks.org.


Selected Publications:
Kaiser M, Hilgetag CC, van Ooyen A (2009) Random outgrowth and spatial competition generate realistic connection length distributions and filling fractions. Cerebral Cortex

Kaiser M, Hilgetag CC (2006) Nonoptimal Component Placement, but Short Processing Paths, due to Long-Distance Projections in Neural Systems. PLoS Computational Biology 7:e95

Sporns O, Chialvo DR, Kaiser M, Hilgetag CC (2004) Organization, Development and Function of Complex Brain Networks. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8:418-425

Kaiser M, Lappe M (2004) Perisaccadic mislocalization orthogonal to saccade direction. Neuron 41:293-300


A complete list, including metrics, is available at:
http://www.researcherid.com/rid/A-7166-2008