Peter N. Steinmetz edit

Peter N. Stenmetz is the Program Director of Neuroengineering at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, AZ, where he runs the Brain Modeling Laboratory. His primary research interests are using single neuron recording in human epilepsy patients to study cognitive neuroscience.

Education

Johns Hopkins University Medical School, M.D., Ph.D. Bioengineering, where in his thesis work with Prof. Raimond Winslow he studied how molecular noise sources present in the photoreceptors of the retina limit the ability to detect flashes of light. This work combined electrophysiological measurements in the tiger salamander retina with computer modeling and signal detection theory. Primary coursework included neuroscience, advanced statistics, and signal processing.

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, B.S. Physics, with honors, where his primary studies were in biophysics with an emphasis on mathematics and computer modeling.

Experience

Barrow Neurological Institute

In 2008, as Program Director of Neuroengineering, he established the laboratory with a focus on human single neuron recording in epilepsy patients. Major discoveries at the laboratory have included a representation of race amongst neurons in the left amygdala, the effects of low-level image properties, such as image brightness and contrast, on neurons in the medial temporal lobe, and a method for determining where seizures are likely to originate based on single neuron recordings.

Arizona State University, Harrington Department of Biomedical Engineering

As Associate Professor, he established research collaborations with epileptologists at the Barrow Neurological Institute and developed courses on biomedical engineering and signal processing.

University of Minnesota, Department of Biomedical Engineering

As Assistant Professor and faculty member of a young department, he developed the core course on biomedical signal processing while collaborating with the University of California, Los Angeles on performing real-time control of single neuron firing in human epilepsy patients.

California Institute of Technology, Koch Laboratory

As Post-doctoral Scholar, his research in the laboratory of Christof Koch focused primarily on understanding how noise sources in cortical pyramidal cells influenced signal processing in the cortex. In this work we used a combination of stochastic ion channel models and multi-compartmental neuronal modeling.

Zanvyl Krieger Mind-Brain Institute, Johns Hopkins University

As Post-doctoral Fellow, his research in the laboratories of Ernst Niebur and Kenneth Johnson showed that synchronous firing of neurons in the second somatosensory area was related to the attention devoted to a tactile, versus a visual, stimulus. This work used Monte Carlo method simulation to show the statistical significance of these differences recorded in the Macaque monkey.

Steinmetz & Brown, Ltd.

As President, he co-founded this company which employed 10 people, working primarily on the design and development of microprocessor-based controllers, as well as business database systems using the Macintosh platform.