Our Team
Christof Koch, Ph.D.
(Executive Board | Scientific Advisory Board)
Born in the American Midwest, Christof Koch grew up in Holland, Germany, Canada, and Morocco. He studied Physics and Philosophy at the University of Tübingen in Germany and was awarded his Ph.D. in Biophysics. Following four years at MIT, Christof joined the California Institute of Technology as a Professor in Biology and Engineering. After a quarter of a century, Dr. Koch left academia to became the Chief Scientific Officer at the non-for-profit Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle.
Giulio Tononi, M.D., Ph.D.
(Executive Board | Scientific Advisory Board)
Giulio Tononi received his medical degree and specialized in Psychiatry at the University of Pisa, Italy. After serving as a medical officer in the Army, he obtained a Ph.D. in neuroscience as a fellow of the Scuola Superiore, based on his work on sleep regulation. From 1990 to 2000, he has been at The Neurosciences Institute, first in New York and then in San Diego. He is currently Professor of Psychiatry, Distinguished Professor in Consciousness Science, and the David P. White Chair in Sleep Medicine at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Alexander Bystritsky, M.D., Ph.D.
(Executive Board | Executive Director)
Alexander Bystritsky, M.D., Ph.D. is Co-Founder and Executive Director of Tiny Blue Dot consciousness research foundation. He graduated from Pavlov Medical Institute (currently Pavlov Medical University) in St. Petersburg, Russia (former Soviet Union) with M.D. degree in 1977 and then rapidly completed his Ph.D. in Pharmacology in 1979. As a student he worked in the famous former Pavlov’s laboratory of the Institute of Experimental Medicine. In 1976 his paper won the Gold Medal for the Best Student Scientific Paper in the USSR among all sciences.
Darin D. Dougherty, M.D., MMSc
(Scientific Advisory Board)
Dr. Darin D. Dougherty is the Director of the Neurotherapeutics Division in the Department of Psychiatry at MGH, the Director of the Mood Disorders Section of the Massachusetts General Hospital Psychiatric Neuroimaging Group, and the Associate Director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Psychiatric Neuroimaging Group. Dr. Dougherty is also the Director of Medical Education at the Massachusetts General Hospital Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Institute and the Co-Director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Trichotillomania Clinic.
Mark S. George, M.D.
(Scientific Advisory Board)
Dr. George began studying the relationship between mind and brain as an undergraduate philosophy student at Davidson College. He has continued this interest throughout his career with a focus on using brain imaging and brain stimulation to understand mood regulating circuits and how they go awry in depression and then using this knowledge to devise new treatments. He received his MD from the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston in 1985, where he continued with dual residencies in both neurology and psychiatry. Following his residency training, he did a research fellowship in brain imaging at the Institute of Neurology, Queen Square, London, England.
Mark S. Cohen, Ph.D.
(Scientific Advisory Board)
Dr. Mark Cohen is the Technical Director of the Staglin Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the UCLA School of Medicine. He is the Director of the Federally-Sponsored UCLA/Semel Neuroimaging Training Program, and is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, as well as in the Departments of Neurology, Radiological Sciences, Psychology, Biomedical Physics, and Bioengineering. Dr. Cohen’s research has been centered on the development of technological solutions to address difficult questions in neuroscience, particularly in Cognitive Neuroscience, and how the brain creates the mind.
Marcello Masssimini, M.D., Ph.D.
(Scientific Advisory Board)
Marcello Massimini, was trained as a Medical Doctor, received a PhD in Neurophysiology and is currently Full Professor of Neurophysiology at the University of Milan. he devoted his research to understanding what changes in thalamocortical networks when consciousness fades and recovers. After studying the basic mechanism of EEG oscillations by means of intracellular recording of cortical neurons during anesthesia, he performed the first high-density EEG recordings (256 channels) in sleeping humans to describe the spatial-temporal dynamics of sleep slow oscillations.
Martin M. Monti, Ph.D.
(Scientific Advisory Board)
Dr. Martin M. Monti is currently an assistant professor in the Departments of Psychology and Neurosurgery at UCLA. Prior to joining the faculty at UCLA, in 2011, he received his doctorate in Psychology and Neurosciences at Princeton University (Princeton, NJ, USA), and spent three years as a Career Development Fellow at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, UK. His research is mainly centered on the neural basis of consciousness.
Elizabeth Koch
(President)
Elizabeth Koch is the co-founder of Tiny Blue Dot consciousness research foundation. She is co-founder and CEO of Catapult, a publishing company and writers’ community that uses extraordinary storytelling as a means of catalyzing empathy. She’s the founder of New Balloon, a media company at the nexus of entertainment and technology that has executive produced emotionally demanding films such as Beasts of No Nation (Netflix’s first Golden Globe nominated feature film) and Last Days in the Desert, and is currently developing an “audience participation” theater experience where viewers engage in disagreement with openness and vulnerability.
Nicco Reggente, Ph.D.
(Project Officer)
Nicco received his Ph.D. from UCLA in Cognitive Neuroscience and two B.A degrees from New York University in Psychology and Philosophy. His graduate work focused on using advanced neuroimaging tools and analyses (e.g. fMRI. machine-learning, and virtual reality) to decode the neural mechanisms supporting enhanced mnemonic retrieval, intelligence, psychiatric disorders, and disorders of consciousness. Nicco has received extensive sources of academic funding including the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship award and UCLA’s NIH funded Neuroimaging Training Program.