Tatjana Tchumatchenko's research is uniquely positioned at the intersection between basic neurosciences, physics, computer science, and medicine. A physicist by training, her research focuses on the dynamics of neural networks, especially the emergence of computations at the network level and synaptic dynamics that provides the biological basis for it. Her research provides a quantitative understanding of how neurons encode incoming information and how they organize their intracellular, synaptic, and network dynamics to implement the complex thought processes that make us who we are. Her research has applications in medicine and can help explain how cognitive pathologies emerge over time (e.g., Huntington's disease), but it also has consequences for the design of biologically motivated learning rules in artificial neural network applications.
In the last years, her research has been honored by a Heinz Maier-Leibnitz-Preis and an ERC Starting Grant. As professor at the University Medical Center Mainz, she continues her research, among other projects, in the top-level research area ReALity (Resilience, Adaptation and Longevity) where she and her colleagues analyse different aspects of brain development, neuropsychiatric diseases and the development of resilience.