James M. Bower

James Mason Bower (born February 17, 1954, Northampton, Massachusetts, USA) is an American neuroscientist and CEO and Chairman of the Board of Numedeon Inc., creator of the Whyville.net educational virtual world. He graduated from McQuaid Jesuit High School in Rochester, New York attending Antioch College and Montana State University as an undergraduate and then received his PhD in neurophysiology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, U.S. in 1982. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Rodolfo Llinas at NYU School of Medicine and the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and then took a faculty position at the California Institute of Technology where he was promoted to Professor of Computational Neuroscience. Since 2002 he has held the position of Professor of Computational Biology at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and the University of Texas at San Antonio

Scientific Research

His core scientific research involves computational studies designed to uncover structure / function relations in cortical structures of the mammalian brain, including both those associated with the olfactory system, and the cerebellum. His laboratory uses a wide range of experimental and model based techniques and has pioneered the use of realistic modeling techniques in computational neuroscience, [cite news| title=Who's News: Renowned Computational Neurobiologist James Bower Joins Research Imaging Center | work=The News | url=http://www.uthscsa.edu/opa/issues/new35-12/whosnew.html| date=2002-03-22 | accessdate=2007-07-06] .

Scientific Infrastructure

He has also been involved in numerous science infrastructure efforts, including establishing and maintaining the GENESIS (software) simulation system, founding and directing for its first 5 years the Methods in Computational Neuroscience Course at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA., starting the European Union's Methods in Computational Neuroscience Course, and recently helping to organize the first Latin American Course for Computational Neuroscience (LASCON). He was also one of the founding editors of the Journal of Computational Neuroscience, and the Annual International Meeting in Computational Neuroscience which he directed from 1991 to 2001.

Efforts in Education

Dr. Bower has also been involved in educational reform efforts since he was President of the Teen League of Rochester (NY) as a high school student from 1970 - 1971. While at Caltech, he founded and directed the Caltech Precollege Science Initiative (CAPSI). He has been a member of numerous national advisory groups on education, including within the National Research Council of the National Academy of Science, the National Science Foundation and the Society for Neuroscience.

Business efforts

Dr. Bower is CEO and Chairman of the Board of Numedeon Inc. a company he founded in 1998 to develop educationally related virtual worlds. The company's flagship effort, Whyville.net is now one of the largest education sites for young adults on the World Wide Web, with a player base of 2.90 million. [cite news| title=More real people are leading virtual lives | author=James H. Burnett III | work=The Miami Herald | url=http://www.miamiherald.com/460/story/106953.html | date=2007-05-15 | accessdate=2007-05-28] Whyville has been particularly successful in attracting young teens [cite news| title=Whyville: the place girls love to go for science | author=Michelle Thaller | work=The Christian Science Monitor | url=http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0816/p25s01-lecs.html| date=2002-08-16 | accessdate=2002-08-16]

Publications

*"The Book of GENESIS: Exploring Realistic Neural Models with the GEneral NEural SImulation System", Springer Verlag, (1998), ISBN 978-0387949383
*"Computational Modeling of Genetic and Biochemical Networks", MIT Press, (2004), ISBN 978-0262524230
*"Rethinking the Lesser Brain", Scientific American, August 2003.

References

External links

* [http://www.bower-lab.org The Bower Laboratory Homepage]
* [http://www.numedeon.com/smmk/frontOffice/lobby Numedeon Inc. Homepage]
* [http://b.whyville.net/smmk/top/gates Whyville.net Homepage]
* [http://www.genesis-sim.org/GENESIS/ GENESIS Distribution and Support Site]