Dr Ingvars Birznieks is a sensory neurophysiologist interested in sensory information encoding mechanisms. He received his PhD training in the world’s leading laboratories in the field of somatosensory research led by Prof Roland S Johansson at the Umeå University in Sweden and Prof Antony W Goodwin at the Melbourne University. He has long standing teaching experience which began at the Department of Human and Animal Physiology, University of Latvia where he was known for his passion teaching Sensory Physiology and Regulation Principles in Biological Systems. In 2005 he received a prestigious Fellowship from the Swedish Medical Research Council to conduct postdoctoral research at NeuRA with Prof Vaughan Macefield. During his postdoctoral studies, he committed to broaden his research competence to study the physiological mechanisms underlying development of chronic pain and the function of the autonomic nervous system.
After his postdoc studies, he was offered a position of senior research officer at NeuRA to contribute to the large scale cross-organisational project supported by Australian Government Special Research Initiative “Thinking Systems” – the project bringing together neuroscientists, biomedical engineers and roboticists. This project promoted advanced research in the field of his primary competence - tactile sensory control of dexterous manipulation and fostered his growth as independent researcher. The following National Competitive Grant success ($1.1m) enabled him to pursue his long time ambition to establish his own research network centred around the studies on neuronal information encoding mechanisms in the somatosensory system. His current focus is cross-disciplinary projects linking neuroscience, clinical neurology, and biomedical engineering. Since 2011 he has been Senior Lecturer (Human Physiology) at the School of Science and Health at UWS.
