About the authors

Feng Zhang

Feng Zhang received his bachelor's degree in chemistry and physics from Harvard, Massachusetts, USA, and is pursuing his doctoral training at Stanford University, Palo Alto, USA. He works with Karl Deisseroth in developing new modalities for interfacing with the brain, with a primary emphasis on neuropsychiatric disorders.

Alexander M. Aravanis

Alex received his M.D. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University, Palo Alto, USA. For his dissertation with Richard Tsien he characterized the modes of synaptic vesicle fusion in the mammalian central nervous system. He is a founder of Pria Diagnostics, a medical device company that produces microfluorimetry and microfluidic systems. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow working with Karl Deisseroth doing research on optical neural interfaces and medical devices.

Antoine Adamantidis

Antoine Adamantidis received a Ph.D. in biomedical sciences from the University of Liege, Belgium, and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, Palo Alto, USA, in the laboratory of Luis de Lecea. His main interest is hypothalamic neuronal circuits and their association with specific behaviours such as sleep and wakefulness.

Luis de Lecea

Luis de Lecea is an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences at Stanford University, Palo Alto, USA. His laboratory conducts multidisciplinary studies, including molecular, pharmacological and behavioural approaches to dissect the molecules and neuronal circuits that modulate arousal.

Karl Deisseroth

Karl Deisseroth received his bachelor's degree from Harvard, Massachusetts, USA, and his M.D. and Ph.D. from Stanford, Palo Alto, USA. He completed postdoctoral training, a medical internship and adult psychiatry residency at Stanford, where he is now an assistant professor of Bioengineering and Psychiatry. His bioengineering laboratory is devoted to developing and applying technologies for probing and modulating neural circuits. He also treats patients in an interventional psychiatry-focused clinic at Stanford.