Seminari del programa de Doctorat en Enginyeria Biomèdica

Dr. Gross completed his undergraduate training in engineering at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1962. After five years as a pilot with the United States Air Force, which included one year in Vietnam as a Forward Air Controller, he entered graduate training at Florida State University and received the Ph.D. in biophysics and neurophysiology in 1973. Postdoctoral training was obtained with the Experimental Neuropathology Section of the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry in Munich. After a brief period as a visiting scientist with the Sandoz Corporation in Basel, he moved to Texas. From 1978 to 1965 he was an assistant, and then associate, professor with the Department of Biology at the Texas Woman's University. In August of 1985 he joined the Department of Biological Sciences at UNT.

Dr. Gross was the founder of the UNT Center for Network Neuroscience in January 1987 and has been the director of the CNNS since that time. He was promoted to Professor of Biology with the specialty in neuroscience in Sept. of 1988 and to Regents Professor in 1996. Since receiving his Ph.D., Dr. Gross has been interested in information processing in the brain with emphasis on pattern processing in small networks. For the past 20 years, his research has focused on the self-organization and internal dynamics of networks in cell cultures derived from the mammalian central nervous system. Dr. Gross has pioneered the development of substrate integrated, thin film microelectrode arrays for use in cell culture and has systematically applied this technique to the simultaneous, long-term monitoring of neuronal activity in cultured networks and to the design and fabrication of new life-support systems for long-term maintenance of cultures during recording and optical monitoring. He has shown that neuronal monolayers in culture are pharmacologically histiotypic and retain characteristics of the parent tissue after many months in culture. These efforts have led to new applications in the areas of toxicology, drug development, and tissue-based biosensors. Industry is now showing interest in parallel network analyses that will allow rapid, high throughput screening of new chemical compounds for quantitative neurotoxicology evaluations. Since 1990, Dr. Gross has trained 37 researchers from the US, England, Germany, Japan, and Spain. Dr. Gross has published 112 research articles and presented a total of 93 invited seminars. Research collaborations are established with the Los Alamos National Laboratory, with the Naval Research Lab (Washington, D.C.), with the University of Nottingham (U.K.), with the University of Rostock, Germany, and with the Technical University of Munich.