Dr. Jian Gan is a cellular/systems neuroscientist. After obtaining his PhD from the University of Glasgow, supported by a Synergy Postgraduate Award and an Overseas Research Student Award, he went on to work in the lab of Prof. Peter Jonas in the University of Freiburg, Germany and later Institute of Science and Technology Austria near Vienna, where he employed and optimised in vivo high-resolution patch-clamp recording technique to elucidate synaptic mechanism of hippocampal oscillations that are essential for spatial coding and memory consolidation in awake mice. He went on to gain further experience in implementing well-controlled quantitative cognitive behaviours for mice in virtual reality with high-density population recording in the lab of Prof. Thomas Klausberger at the Medical University of Vienna, before setting up his own lab in the University of Edinburgh, funded by a UKDRI fellowship. His lab is very much interested in clarifying real-time synaptic transmission dynamics and its resulting population coding schemes underlying cognitive processes such as oscillations, spatial coding, and simple decision making in vivo. With such knowledge, the lab sorts to elaborate on what, where, when and how such dynamism goes wrong in disease conditions, e.g. dementia.  

Willingness to take PhD students:  Yes