Martin Munz is a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Botond Roska at the Institute of Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology Basel. He is interested in understanding the role of activity during the inception of cortical circuits. Specifically, he developed imaging, molecular and electrophysiological techniques to allow the in vivo observation and manipulation of developing embryonic cortical circuits in mice. He plans to describe cell type-specific changes that occur in mice with autism-related mutations during embryonic development.

Munz 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. Here, he used in vivo time-lapse imaging and electrophysiological analysis of individual retinal ganglion cell axons that were visually stimulated either synchronously or asynchronously relative to neighboring inputs in the optic tectum of Xenopus laevis and found that both correlated and uncorrelated firing controls axon remodeling. Munz received his M.Sc. degree from the Charité Berlin, his B.Eng. in biotechnology from Nord-Trøndelag University College in Norway, and his B.Sc. in applied biology from the University of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg in Germany.