Professor Albert Cardona

Albert Cardona studied Biology at the University of Barcelona (1996-2000), where he also completed a PhD in Developmental Biology (2000-2005). After a short stint as a software engineer at the Institute of Neuroinformatics in Zurich (2005) and a postdoc in neurobiology of Drosophila at UCLA (2005-2008), which led to the founding of the Fiji image processing software, Albert was awarded a junior group leader position at the Institute of Neuroinformatics in Zurich (2008-2011) where he developed software (TrakEM2; CATMAID) for serial section electron microscopy registration and analysis of neural circuits, to enable and support his research on Drosophila connectomics. He then was awarded a group leader position at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Janelia Research Campus (HHMI; 2012-2019) where he organized dozens of laboratories world wide to jointly map the synaptic wiring diagram of the larval Drosophila nervous system. In 2015, Albert was awarded a lectureship (2015-2016) and then was promoted to reader on connectomics (2017-to-date) at the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience (PDN) at the Unversity of Cambridge. In 2019, Albert moved to Cambridge, was awarded fellowship at Pembroke college, and was awarded a programme leader position at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology (MRC LMB) to conduct research on the structure-function relationship of neural circuits within the newly formed Molecular Connectomics Inititative at the MRC LMB.

Albert Cardona maps neuronal circuits with synaptic resolution using volume electron microscopy, and studies how the structure of a neural circuit relates to its function. The lab uses optophysiology, electrophysiology, electron microscopy, light microscopy, Drosophila transgenics, computer vision, machine learning and software engineering. See his research page at the MRC LMB https://www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/group-leaders/a-to-g/albert-cardona/ and at PDN https://www.pdn.cam.ac.uk/directory/albert-cardona