Tamás F. Freund

Tamás F. Freund is a Professor and Director of the Institute of Experimental Medicine, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Chairman of the Neuroscience Department of the Péter Pázmány Catholic University in Budapest. He graduated as a biologist at the Eotvos University in Budapest, worked as a student researcher at the Department of Anatomy, Semmelweis Medical School, Budapest under the supervision of Peter Somogyi and Janos Szentagothqai, and spent a total of 4 years in Oxford in the Department of Pharmacology. He became head of department (1990), then deputy director (1993), and director (2002) of the Institute of Experimental Medicine, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest. He has been president of the Federation of European Neuroscience Soceities (FENS) from 2004 till 2006, and served as Chairman of the IBRO Central and Eastern Europe Regional Committee (1999-2003). He is section editor of 2 major international journals, and editorial board member of six others. He is a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1998, president since 2020), the Academia Europaea (London, 2000), the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (2001), the Academia Scientiarum et Artium Europaea (2001), and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2014). The major international awards he received include: the Demuth Award (Switzerland, 1991), the KRIEG Cortical Discoverer Award and the Cajal Medal (1998, U.S.A.), the Kemali Award (1998) and the Brain Prize (2011, Denmark). In Hungary his major prizes include the Bolyai Prize (2000, Hungary), the Széchenyi Prize, (2005), and the Prima Primissima Award (2013). His main scientific interest is the functional architecture and physiology of neuronal circuits in the cerebral cortex.