Tania Rinaldi Barkat Copenhagen University tbarkat(at)sund.ku.dk Resume [pdf] |
I am an assistant professor in neuroscience. My research focuses on understanding the function of auditory cortical circuits at a system level in health and disease. I use in vivo extracellular recording, voltage sensitive dye imaging and behavioural testing in mouse models to localise and quantify responses to diverse sound features.
As a postdoc within Prof. Takao Hensch's lab at Harvard University, I investigated the development of neuronal connectivity during the critical period of plasticity in the mouse auditory cortex. I used molecular, physiological and imaging techniques in vitro and in vivo to track how neurons connect, how the connections develop during brain maturation, and what factors alter normal development in brain connectivity disorders. During my graduate studies in Prof. Henry Markram's lab at the EPFL, Switzerland, I characterized the abnormal neocortical microcircuit in an animal model of autism, using multi-patch clamp recording as well as numerous additional physiological, imaging and molecular techniques.
I was elected to be a member of the Harvard Society of Fellows in 2008. In 2007, I received the Chorafas Foundation's prize for outstanding PhD thesis. I hold a Master of Science in Chemistry from EPFL, Switzerland. In 1998, I spent a year at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, as an exchange student.
I am Swiss and Danish. I grew up in Switzerland. I now live with my husband and our two daughters in Copenhagen, Denmark. I enjoy mountaineering, traveling and reading.