Konrad Kording

Konrad Kording is a German born professor at Northwestern University. He is known for his contributions to the fields of motor control, neural data methods, and computational neuroscience.

Kording obtained a diploma degree in Physics from the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich (2000) and a PhD in physics from the Institute of Neuroinformatics at the ETH (2003). He was a postdoctoral fellow at UCL London, and a Heisenberg Fellow at the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the MIT.

He is now full Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Physiology, and Applied Mathematics at Northwestern University. He is leading the Bayesian Behavior Laboratory in the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

Konrad Kording's research combines experimental methods with the application of computational principles. The main principle of his work is the idea of normative models and in particular Bayesian statistics. Some of his most controversial work is work on predicting the future success of scientists, leading to a calculator predicting the h-index 10 years into the future. His experimental work addresses motor learning and motor control, relating these phenomena to Bayesian ideas. Most recently, he has focused on methods of analyzing neural data and methods for obtaining large neural datasets (see Brain Initiative).