Christoph von der Malsburg

Christoph von der Malsburg (born 8 May 1942 in Kassel) is a German physicist and neuroscientist.

Early life

von der Malsburg obtained his PhD with a concentration in elementary particle physics at CERN and the University of Heidelberg in 1970.

Career

He joined the neurobiology section of the Max-Planck-Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen. He remained there until 1987, when he became Professor of Computer Science, Neuroscience, Physics and Psychology at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.^[1] In 1990, he founded the Institut für Neuroinformatik (Institute for Neural Computation) at Ruhr-University Bochum, together with Werner von Seelen. He commuted between the two institutions until 2007, when he joined the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies as a Senior Fellow.

Von der Malsburg cofounded two companies and received many awards.

Brain Theory

His research interests focused on processes of organization in the brain with emphasis on the structure and function of the visual system. His publications concerning the theory of self-organization of regular fiber projections in the visual system made him a pioneer of this field. He is known for his criticism of the theory of neural networks.^[2] He claimed that the generally accepted view fails because of the binding problem. To solve it he formulated the Dynamic Link Architecture, a system of rapidly switching network fragments, as applied to facial recognition.^[3]

Recognition

Pioneer Award 1994 of the Neural Network Council of the IEEE
Karl Heinz Beckurts Foundation Award 1998
Koerber-Award for European Science 2000
Hebb Award 2003 of the International Neural Network Society
President of the European Neural Network Society from 1995 to 1996
Fellow of the International Neural Network Society
Co-editor of several journals

References

^ Christoph von der Malsburg Professor of Computer Science, Computer Science Department, Biology Department, Department for Physics and Astronomy Director, Laboratory of Computational and Biological Vision Director, Institut für Neuroinformatik, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany http://ngp.usc.edu/faculty/profile/?fid=29
^ Christoph von der Malsburg: The correlation theory of brain function. Internal Report 81-2, MPI Biophysical Chemistry, 1981. https://fias.uni-frankfurt.de/fileadmin/fias/malsburg/publications/vdM_correlation.pdf See Reprint in Models of Neural Networks II, chapter 2, pages 95-119. Springer, Berlin, 1994.
^ P. Wolfrum, C. Wolff, J. Lücke, and C. von der Malsburg. A recurrent dynamic model for correspondence-based face recognition. Journal of Vision 8, 1--18. doi:10.1167/8.7.34, 2008. http://doi.org/10.1167/8.7.34

[1] Christoph von der Malsburg Professor of Computer Science, Computer Science Department, Biology Department, Department for Physics and Astronomy Director, Laboratory of Computational and Biological Vision Director, Institut für Neuroinformatik, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany http://ngp.usc.edu/faculty/profile/?fid=29

[2] Christoph von der Malsburg: The correlation theory of brain function. Internal Report 81-2, MPI Biophysical Chemistry, 1981. https://fias.uni-frankfurt.de/fileadmin/fias/malsburg/publications/vdM_correlation.pdf See Reprint in Models of Neural Networks II, chapter 2, pages 95-119. Springer, Berlin, 1994.

[3] P. Wolfrum, C. Wolff, J. Lücke, and C. von der Malsburg. A recurrent dynamic model for correspondence-based face recognition. Journal of Vision 8, 1--18. doi:10.1167/8.7.34, 2008. http://doi.org/10.1167/8.7.34

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