Martin Munz is assistant professor in the Department of Physiology and a member of the Women and Children’s Health Research Institute and the Neuroscience and Mental Health Institute at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. He received his Ph.D. from McGill University in Montreal where he studied the effects of Hebbian mechanisms on axonal growth in the lab of Edward Ruthazer. He then completed postdoctoral training with Botond Roska, first at the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Basel, Switzerland, and then at the Institute of Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology in Basel. During his postdoctoral studies, he developed a technique to allow two-photon imaging and electrophysiological recordings of cortical circuits in living mouse embryos.

The Munz laboratory aims to understand how cortical circuits form and function. The team investigates the influence of autism associated genes on neuronal activity, cell migration and neuronal morphology from the inception of cortical circuits during embryonic ages until the circuits have fully developed in the adult. To address these questions, the team employs genetically modified mice, two-photon microscopy, electrophysiology, molecular tools and viral tracing.