Arthur Toga, PhD

Arthur W. Toga is a Professor of Neurology at UCLA, founder and Director of the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, Co-Director of the UCLA Brain Mapping Center, and the founding editor of the journal NeuroImage. Dr. Toga received his MS degree and PhD in neuroscience from St. Louis University and did a postdoctoral fellowship at Washington University in the Department of Neurology. He has formal training in neuroscience and great of depth of knowledge and expertise in computer science and informatics. Dr. Toga has a career-long funding and publication record in the analysis, registration, and modeling of structural and functional images obtained from many species, including humans. He has developed unique mathematical techniques for global and local warping of images and visualization of composite brain image sets. Dr. Toga's laboratory coordinates neuroimage analysis activities throughout the UCLA campus and with collaborators around the world. All his activities continue to focus on the relationship between brain structure and function, primarily emphasizing structure utilizing three-dimensional atlasing and analyses of morphometric variability in populations and individuals, both in health and disease, including children and aged populations. The work that he has pioneered continues to focus on the creation, testing, and validation of mathematical strategies for computational neuroanatomy and the development of algorithmic approaches resulting in the characterization and measurement of anatomy. Dr. Toga's interests in visualization and data immersion stem from research in mapping, deformation correction, graphics, and database. He serves on several relevant national and international boards and commissions including the United StatesñEuropean Community MegaScience Forum and is a U.S. representative for the Office of Economic and Cooperative Development Committee on Neuroinformatics. He has worked with industry and entertainment leaders including Silicon Graphics Inc., IBM, Paramount Pictures, MGM, and Digital Light and Magic. He is the recipient of many awards and recently received the SPIE image-processing ìcum laudeî award, the Di Chiro Award for Outstanding Scientific Researcher, and a Smithsonian Award for Innovation in 1999.