Karl Zilles MD, PhD

Prof. Karl Zilles, MD, PhD, graduated from the University of Frankfurt and received the MD in 1971. He received the PhD (1977) in Anatomy from the Medical School, Hannover, Germany. He became a Full Professor of Anatomy and Neuroanatomy in 1981 at the University of Cologne, and 1991 at the University of Düsseldorf. He was Director of the C. & O. Vogt- Brain Research Institute from 1991 to 2012, and from 1998 to 2012 Director of the Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, Research Center Jülich, Germany. He is now JARA-Senior Professor at the Research Center Jülich and at the RWTH University Aachen, Germany. He is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Brain Structure and Function, and was member of editorial boards of various scientific journals (e.g., Neuroimage). Karl Zilles is Fellow of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and Fellow of the North-Rhine Westphalia Academy of Science and Arts. His research focus is on the structural (cyto- and myeloarchitecture), molecular (receptorarchitecture) and functional (neuroimaging using MRI, fMRI and PET) organization of the mouse, rat, non-human primate and human cerebral cortex. He pioneered brain mapping based on the regional and laminar distribution of transmitter receptors in healthy and pathologically impaired human brains and brains of genetic mouse and models. Recently, he introduced together with Katrin Amunts, Marcus Axer and colleagues an ultra-high-resolution method for nerve fiber and fiber tract visualization based on polarized light imaging in the human brain and those of mouse, rat and monkey.