Joel Frohlich

ERC-funded Group Leader @ University of Tübingen

About

I am a junior group leader (similar to assistant professor in US academia) investigating fetal neuroscience at the fMEG Center at the University of Tübingen in Germany. Through a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant, I was awarded 1.5 million euros in 2025 to study fetal sensory-driven cognition with MEG as principal investigator of the FETAL-MIND project (2026 - 2031). My latest work investigating prenatal and infant development with MEG was recently published in Nature Mental Health (February 2024) and featured in a cover story for Der Spiegel (March 16 2024). Before moving to Tübingen, I studied consciousness in the laboratory of Dr. Martin Monti at UCLA, and I received my PhD in neuroscience from UCLA in 2018 while working working in the laboratory of Dr. Shafali Jeste. Outside of academia, my science writing for a general audience has appeared in online publications such as The Atlantic, Psychology Today, Aeon, Nautilus, Psyche, and Motherboard. In 2016, I was jointly awarded the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) Next Generation Award, which recognizes “outstanding contributions to public communication, outreach, and education about neuroscience,” for my contributions to the science communication website Knowing Neurons. Banner image is my photo of M31 (shot from Joshua Tree, California, October 2020).

Country

Germany

City

Tübingen

Industry

Research

Skill

Teaching, EEG, Matlab, functional connectomics, Schizophrenia, Nonlinear dynamics, Autism Spectrum Disorders, Molecular Biology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Data Analysis

Experience

ERC-funded Group Leader

University of Tübingen

2026-2 - 2026-3 · 2 mos

Germany

Leveraging rare, specialized resources at the University of Tuebingen's fMEG Center, I am conducting the first-ever study of fetal neural responses to social stimuli using recent innovations toward in utero stimulus delivery and cutting edge techniques for fetal brain signal detection. Specifically, my ERC-funded research will use fetal magnetoencephalography (MEG) in the third trimester, employing both traditional superconducting MEG (SQUID-MEG) and newer optically pumped magnetometers (OPM-MEG) to detect fetal neural responses to social stimuli (face-like patterns and voices).

Postdoctoral Researcher

University of Tübingen

2022-1 - 2026-1 · 4 yrs 1 mo

Postdoctoral Researcher

UCLA

2018-9 - 2022-1 · 3 yrs 5 mos

I am a postdoc studying disorders of consciousness (DOC) in the laboratory of Dr. Martin Monti.

Graduate Student Researcher

UCLA

2013-9 - 2018-8 · 5 yrs

UCLA Center for Autism Research and Treatment (CART)

My dissertation focused on EEG oscillations as biomarkers of neurodevelopmental disorders, with a particular focus on duplication 15q11-q13 (Dup15q) syndrome and Angelman syndrome.