Nancy Kopell, PhD

Professor, Boston University College of Arts and Sciences

Biography

Nancy Kopell received her B.A. from Cornell University in 1963 and her Ph.D. from Berkeley in 1967. She is currently the William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor at Boston University, and co-director of the Center for Computational Neuroscience and Neural Technology (CompNet). She organized and directs the Cognitive Rhythms Collaborative (CRC), a group of over two dozen labs, mostly in the Boston Area, working on brain dyanmics and their cognitive implications.

Kopell's Ph.D. training was in pure mathematics, but she transitioned to applied mathematics shortly after receiving her degree. In the first part of her career, she worked on pattern formation in chemical systems, oscillating systems and problems involving the geometry of systems with multiple time scales. For the last two decades, she has worked on mathematical problems in neuroscience. Her current interests parallel the themes of the CRC: how does the brain produce its dynamics (physiological mechanisms), how do brain rhythms take part in cognition (sensory processing, attention, memory, motor control), and how can pathologies of brain dynamics help to understand symptoms of neurological diseases (Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia, epilepsy) as well as alternate states of consciousness (anesthesia). She collaborates widely with experimentalists and clinicians.

Kopell is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was recently selected to be an honorary member of the London Mathematical Society, a distinction given to one or two mathematicians per year worldwide. She has been awarded Sloan Guggenheim, and McArthur Fellowships, and has an honory Ph.D. from the New Jersey Institute of Technology. She has given the Weldon Memorial Prize Lecture (Oxford), the von Neumann Lecture (SIAM) and the Josiah Willard Gibbs Lecture (AMS, as well as multiple other named lectureships.

Publications

  • Published 11/26/2024

    Cattani A, Arnold DB, McCarthy M, Kopell N. Basolateral amygdala oscillations enable fear learning in a biophysical model. Elife. 2024 Nov 26; 12. PMID: 39590510.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 5/20/2024

    Adam E, Kowalski M, Akeju O, Miller EK, Brown EN, McCarthy MM, Kopell N. Ketamine can produce oscillatory dynamics by engaging mechanisms dependent on the kinetics of NMDA receptors. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2024 May 28; 121(22):e2402732121. PMID: 38768339.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 4/5/2024

    Adam E, Kowalski M, Akeju O, Miller EK, Brown EN, McCarthy MM, Kopell N. Ketamine can produce oscillatory dynamics by engaging mechanisms dependent on the kinetics of NMDA receptors. bioRxiv. 2024 Apr 05. PMID: 38617266.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 2/28/2024

    Murdock MH, Yang CY, Sun N, Pao PC, Blanco-Duque C, Kahn MC, Kim T, Lavoie NS, Victor MB, Islam MR, Galiana F, Leary N, Wang S, Bubnys A, Ma E, Akay LA, Sneve M, Qian Y, Lai C, McCarthy MM, Kopell N, Kellis M, Piatkevich KD, Boyden ES, Tsai LH. Multisensory gamma stimulation promotes glymphatic clearance of amyloid. Nature. 2024 Mar; 627(8002):149-156. PMID: 38418876.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 6/14/2023

    Soplata AE, Adam E, Brown EN, Purdon PL, McCarthy MM, Kopell N. Rapid thalamocortical network switching mediated by cortical synchronization underlies propofol-induced EEG signatures: a biophysical model. J Neurophysiol. 2023 Jul 01; 130(1):86-103. PMID: 37314079.

    Read at: PubMed

Other Positions

  • Professor, Pharmacology, Physiology & Biophysics
    Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine
  • Co-Director, Engineering
    Boston University

Education

  • University of California, Berkeley, PhD
  • University of California, Berkeley, MA
  • Cornell University, AB