Eye on A.I. · Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Dr. Christof Koch shared his academic and professional journey, beginning with a PhD in theoretical physics and transitioning to neuroscience. He detailed his work at Caltech, his collaboration with Francis Crick, and his roles at the Paul Allen Institute and the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation.
“I'm a physicist. I got my PhD in theoretical physics, but I've studied for the past 40 years brains. I'm a neuroscientist.”
“And as you mentioned, I worked from for 14 years with Francis Crick, the Nobel prize winning molecular biologist who discovered, you know, co-discovered the double helical nature of the DNA, and then shifted as he went from England to La Hoya in Southern California, shifted his interests from molecular biology to consciousness.”
“I left Caltech 15 years ago to join the Paul Allen Institute, Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, for brain science here in Seattle. I was chief scientist and then its president.”