Dr. Christof Koch

Christof Koch is a German-American neuroscientist best known for his studies and writings exploring the basis of consciousness. Trained as a physicist, Koch was for 27 years a professor of biology and engineering at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He is now Chief Scientist of the MindScope program at the Allen Institute in Seattle, leading a ten year, large-scale, high through-put effort to build brain observatories to map, analyze and understand the mouse and human cerebral cortex.
On a quest to understand the physical roots of consciousness, he published his first paper on the neural correlates of consciousness with the molecular biologist Francis Crick thirty years ago. Christof is interested in mystical experiences and what they can tell us about the mind and the brain.
Christof is a vegetarian who lives on San Juan Island in the Pacific North-West, loves big dogs, biking, climbing and rowing. His lastest popular book is The Feeling of Life Itself – Why Consciousness is Widespread but Can’t be Computed.
For more information, see http://www.christofkoch.com