Matthias’ PhD research focused on creating and investigating hybrid light-matter particles in atomically-thin semiconductors, which show great potential for future ultra-energy efficient technologies, including non-traditional sensors, lasers, and transistors.
As a Schmidt Science Fellow, Matthias pivoted from physics to neuroscience biomedical engineering to work on the next generation of neural interfaces. He is utilizing his physics and engineering background to contribute to creating soft, high-density neural probes in the Bao Lab at Stanford University, which can read and induce neural activity with minimal immune responses in both shallow and deep regions of the human brain for chronic applications.
Matthias was born and raised in a village in the North-Eastern part of Bavaria, Germany, and is motivated to tackle knowledge gaps around the brain such as gaining a deeper understanding of cognition at microscopic scales, and how consciousness is formed. His goal is to develop new neuroscience tools and brain-machine interfaces that operate at single-cell resolution, and use them in combination with established methods to learn more about our brains and find cures and treatments for neurological diseases.