Mitchell Goldfarb, Ph.D. Professor of Biological Sciences, Hunter College City University, New York
Title: The Role of FHF Proteins in Spike Frequency Adaptation: Implications for Neural Networks.
Dr. Goldfarb studies how fibroblast growth factor homologous factors (FHFs) modulate the properties of voltage-gated sodium channels (Na v s) and the consequences of FHF modulation on cell and network excitability.
Many FHFs act in a pro-excitatory manner by raising the voltage dependence of Na v closed-state inactivation. By contrast, the A-type FHF subclass exerts a subtle anti-excitatory effect by mediating long-term open-state block of Na v s.
A-type FHFs are responsible spike frequency adaptation (SFA) of hippocampal pyramidal cells, and de novo human missense mutations in FHF2A that abrogate Na v block trigger temporal lobe epileptic encephalopathy.
These findings parallel previous demonstrations that mutations suppressing slow potassium current also suppress SFA and trigger epilepsy.

A current interest is to employ computational models to investigate how SFA affects neural network rhythms and suppresses seizures.
Goldfarb, M. (2024) Fibroblast growth factor homologous factors: canonical and non-canonical mechanisms of action. J. Physiology 602:4097-4110.

https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1113/JP286313

Maurizio MATTIA (ORCID ID: 0000-0002-2356-4509) is a Senior Researcher at ISS and member of the teaching board of the PhD in Bioinformatic and Computational Biology at the Sapienza Univ. of Rome. From 2019 to 2024 he served as adjunct professor of Neural Networks at the Dept. of Physics of Sapienza university. His research activity aims at bridging the gap between theory and experiments on cortical network dynamics within the framework of theoretical physics and computational/systems neuroscience. MM published more than 60 journal papers (h-index: 24, Scopus; 28, Google Scholar), is associate and guest editors of 5 peer-reviewed journals and supervised 16 laurea (MSc) theses and 11 PhD theses. As principal investigator, MM received funding from European Commission under Horizon 2020 (Human Brain Project) and NextGenerationEU (EBRAINS-Italy, MNESYS).

Chiara Bartolozzi is senior researcher tenured at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia.
She earned a degree in Engineering (with honors) at University of Genova (Italy) and a Ph.D. in Neuroinformatics at ETH Zurich, developing analog subthreshold circuits for emulating biophysical neuronal properties onto silicon and modelling selective attention on hierarchical multi-chip systems.
She is currently principal investigator of the Event Driven Perception for Robotics group (edpr.iit.it), mainly working on the application of the "neuromorphic" engineering approach to the design of sensors and algorithms for robotic perception.
Chiara has participated in a number of EU funded projects, she coordinated the H2020 MSCA-ETN "NeuTouch" and FP7 FET "eMorph", and is PI in VOJEXT, APRIL, and PRIMI Research and Innovation Actions.
As leader of the educational activities of the coordination and support action NEUROTECH, she co-organised the Neuromorphic Colloquium, a series of online events to build up educational material for the next generation of neuromorphic researchers.
She is in the scientific board of the Capocaccia Workshop on Neuromorphic Intelligence.
She is Editor for NPJ Robotics, IOP Neuromorphic Computing and Engineering, Frontiers in Neuroscience, IEEE JETCAS and TCASI.
She is an IEEE member, actively supporting the CAS and RAS societies, chair of WiCAS committee. In 2020, she was general chair of "AICAS2020", on Circuits and systems for efficient embedded AI.

Sergio Solinas received his Master's Degree in Physics from the University of Bologna and his PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Antwerp (Belgium), pursuing the development of abstract and biologically realistic neural networks. His training and research path aimed at understanding the stability conditions of neural network activity first using mathematical methods and then seeking inspiration in biological reality. During this path, he has always paid particular attention to automatic control systems in their biological realization, the cerebellum, and the computational principles present at the University of Pavia. Furthermore, he developed a model of control of synaptic plasticity exerted by brain growth factors at the Institute of Biophysics of the CNR. He contributed to implementing neural networks using neuromorphic engineering techniques at the Institute of NeuroInformatics of the ETH in Zurich. More recently, he analyzed the dynamics of biologically realistic neural networks of the human hippocampus and the formation of new memories at the University of Sassari. Currently, Dr. Solinas is a researcher and professor of Systems a​nd Control Theory at the University of Sassari.
https://sites.google.com/view/sergio-solinas/english/biography

Alberto Mazzoni is Associate Professor in Bioengineering at The Biorobotics Institute of the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, where he leads the Computational Neuroengineering Laboratory. He graduated in Theoretical Physics from the University of Pisa and holds a PhD in Neuroscience from the International School of Advanced Studies in Trieste. He worked at the Institute for Scientific Exchange in Turin and at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa, and has been a visiting researcher at the University of Paris V and the University of California San Diego. He is the author of more than 100 scientific manuscripts on neural signal analysis and neural network simulation for the diagnosis and the treatment of neurological dysfunctions, from restoring sensory pathways to migraine pathogenesis. In the last years he mainly focused on neurodegenerative diseases: his team discovered novel neural markers of cognitive and motor symptoms of Parkinsons’ Disease and developed novel tools for early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s dementia, in both cases combining analysis of neural data from patients to network modeling.