Sonja Hofer PhD

Sonja Hofer is an assistant professor at the Biozentrum, University of Basel, since 2013. She will join the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre in London in 2018. She undertook her Ph.D. at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, Martinsried, Germany, followed by a postdoc at University College London. Hofer has received a number of awards and fellowships, including a Wellcome Trust Research Career Development Fellowship and Wellcome-Beit Prize, an ERC Starting Grant, and an Eric Kandel Young Neuroscientists Prize. Her research aims to understand the synaptic organization, function, and plasticity of circuits underlying visual processing in the mammalian brain, using a wide range of methods, including in vivo imaging, electrophysiology, animal behavior, and theoretical modeling, together with molecular and genetic approaches to identify different cell types, manipulate their function and trace specific pathways. Currently, her lab is focused on studying the function of thalamocortical and cortico-cortical circuits during visually-guided behavior, and how these circuits change during learning.