Andrew King

Neural Coding and Plasticity in the Auditory System

I am the Director of the Centre for Integrative Neuroscience in the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics and head of the Oxford Auditory Neuroscience Group. Our research combines behavioural, electrophysiological, imaging and optogenetic approaches, to study auditory and multisensory processing in the brain. I am particularly interested in the plasticity of information processing at higher levels of the auditory system, induced as a result of learning on specific perceptual tasks or following different types of hearing loss.

I obtained a BSc in physiology from King’s College London and was a PhD student at the National Institute for Medical Research in London. I moved to Oxford in 1984 as a Science and Engineering Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow and, two years later, became a Lister Institute Research Fellow. This was also based in Oxford, but included a spell as a visiting scientist at the Eye Research Institute in Boston. In 1991, I became a Wellcome Senior Research Fellow, which was renewed in both 1996 and 2001. I was awarded the Wellcome Prize in Physiology in 1990 and elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2011 and of the Physiological Society in 2017.

Most of my research funding comes through my Principal Research Fellowship from the Wellcome Trust, with additional funding from the Oxford NIHR Biomedical Research Centre, and graduate studentship support from the Wellcome Trust, Action on Hearing Loss, and the University of Oxford.

I am also the Director of the Wellcome Trust four-year doctoral training programme in Neuroscience at the University of Oxford and the Course Director for the one-year MSc in Neuroscience. I am on the Editorial Boards of eLife, the Journal of Physiology, and Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, and recently served as a member of the Interview Committee for the Sir Henry Dale Fellowships, which are funded jointly by the Wellcome Trust and the Royal Society.