Institute for Ophthalmic Research in Tuebingen welcomes Dr Katrin Franke!

We are very pleased to welcome Dr Katrin Franke, who joins the IOR  in January 2025 to establish a new research group "Neural Computation in Vision". Dr Franke's addition to the IOR will bring new opportunities to integrate neuroscience and machine learning to drive research in visual processing and neural computation. Together with her research group, she will integrate experimental neuroscience with machine learning methods to create a powerful framework for understanding how the brain builds robust sensory representations and how these representations are affected in disease states.

In addition to her expertise in the visual processing of sensory information in the cortex, she brings to Tübingen a strong collaboration with Stanford University and her ERC Starting Grant 'Eye to action'.

In collaboration with Stanford University, Dr Franke is comparing the visual systems of mice and primates in order to identify common principles of neural computation. This comparative approach bridges the gap between animal models and human vision research.
 

Here is a summary of her major research projects:

• ERC Starting Grant "Eye to Action": Exploring how the superior colliculus processes visual information to control behaviour using advanced imaging and AI.
• Collaborative Research Centre "Robust Vision": Investigating object recognition and adaptive visual processing in mice and contributing to a film database for vision research.

• ENIGMA Project (Stanford University): Comparing neural representations in mice and non-human primates to improve understanding of biological and artificial vision.