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Dr Matt Rasband is professor and Vivian L Smith Endowed Chair in Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine. He received his PhD in biophysics from the University of Rochester. He has trained or is currently training 22 PhD students and 16 postdoctoral fellows; his trainees have gone on to science-related professions including faculty positions, industry, consulting, or biomedical research foundations. Dr Rasband directs the Neuroscience Graduate Program at Baylor College of Medicine and is the recipient of the National Institutes of Neurological Disorders and Stroke Landis Award for outstanding mentoring. Dr Rasband’s research focuses on the functional organization of axons in health and disease.

Marco Canepari graduated in physics at the University of Genoa in 1994 and received his PhD in biophysics from the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste in 1999. He worked at the National Institute for Medical Research in London, at Yale University and at the University of Basel before joining the Inserm in 2010. In his career, he contributed to the development of several optical techniques for neurophysiology and applied them to many problems in fundamental and translational neuroscience. In the last seven years, he developed specific imaging approaches to investigate action potential generation in the axon initial segment and complemented this experimental analysis with computational strategies to reveal the complex interplay of ion channels underlying this process. He is also involved in several international neuroscience schools training future generation of electrophysiologists.

Dr Amélie Fréal is an Assistant Professor at the Center for Neurogenomics and Cognitive Research (CNCR), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Amsterdam UMC, where she leads a research group studying the molecular mechanisms underlying neuronal excitability and plasticity. Her research focuses on the axon initial segment (AIS), the specialized neuronal domain where action potentials are initiated, and how this structure remodels in response to changes in neuronal activity.

Her lab combines human iPSC-derived neurons, primary neuronal cultures and brain slices with genome editing, advanced microscopy, proteomics, and electrophysiology to uncover how neurons maintain stable function while adapting to changing activity. She is particularly interested in how AIS plasticity contributes to neuronal homeostasis and how its disruption leads to neurological disease. Dr Fréal obtained her PhD in France and completed postdoctoral training in the Netherlands before establishing her independent research group. She is passionate about mentoring young scientists and fostering collaborative, interdisciplinary (and fun!) science.

Matt Grubb is Professor of Neuroscience at King’s College London, and leads a lab investigating the development, plasticity and regeneration of the olfactory system. He has worked on the axon initial segment for almost 20 years, initially mapping out processes and mechanisms of AIS plasticity in cultured neurons, then uncovering in vivo AIS plasticity in specific interneurons of the mouse olfactory bulb. A strong current focus of his lab is the development of the AIS and its interactions with activity-dependent dendritic maturation.

Maarten Kole is an electrophysiologist who has spent more than two decades investigating the functional architecture of the axon initial segment (AIS). As a Research Fellow at the Australian National University, he pioneered direct patch-clamp recordings combined with computational model simulations to map ion channel distributions along the axonal plasmamembrane. This work led to the discovery of a fundamental mechanism underlying action potential initiation in the AIS. He further explored the roles of AIS–soma electrotonic compartmentalization and activity-dependent modulation of action potential waveforms. Maarten is currently Group Leader at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (NIN-KNAW) in Amsterdam and Professor of Biophysics of Complex Cellular Systems at Utrecht University. His research focuses on the neuron-glia biology of the AIS and myelinated internodes, in pyramidal neurons and interneurons in both health and disease. He has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant from the European Union and a Vici grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). More recently, he became co-principal investigator of a 10-year NWO Gravitation Programme grant investigating the neuron-glia basis of psychiatric disorders.