Herwig Baier

Herwig Baier (born May 21, 1965, in Münster) is a German neurobiologist with dual German and US-American citizenship. He is Director at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence (formerly Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology) and head of the department Genes – Circuits – Behavior. Herwig Baier's research aims to understand how animal brains convert sensory inputs into behavioral responses.

Herwig Baier studied biology at the University of Konstanz. In 1990, he joined Friedrich Bonhoeffer's laboratory at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, where he obtained his diploma (1990) and PhD degree (1995). For his post-doctoral training, he moved to the University of California, San Diego, to work with Bill Harris. In 1997, Baier was offered a faculty position by the University of California, San Francisco, where he remained as Full Professor until 2012. In 2011, the Max Planck Society recruited him as Director at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried (Germany).