Martin Munz is a postdoctoral scientist in the laboratory of Botond Roska at the IOB. Together with his main collaborator and fellow lab member Arjun Bharioke and other IOB members, he has been working on two projects to better describe the function and development of cortical layer 5. Munz is especially interested in how neuronal circuits form at the inception of neocortex which happens during embryonic development.
For his grant proposal “Embryonic circuit formation and the impact of autism relevant mutations and activity in vivo”, Munz was selected as a fellow to the 2022 Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) Bridge to Independence (BTI) program.
This annual award aims to support scientists with a Ph.D. and/or M.D. who are in training positions and intend to apply for a tenure-track research faculty position. Since 2015, SFARI BTI Award program engages talented early-career scientists in autism research by facilitating their transition to research independence and providing grant funding at the start of their professorships.
“I am very honored to be a fellow of the program and excited to apply the techniques that we developed here at the IOB to autism research”, says Martin Munz.
Together with his colleagues, Martin Munz developed a method to image the activity and morphology of cortical neurons in mouse embryos in vivo. “Using this method, we study the development of embryonic layer-5 pyramidal neurons, their activity, and their assembly into circuits.” He now plans to study how changes in the expression of autism-relevant genes lead to specific changes in neuronal activity and the impact this has on pyramidal circuit formation.
Find out more about the SFARI Bridge to Independence Award program here.