Christof Koch

Christof Koch is best known for his work on the “neural bases of consciousness.” Though Koch spent 27 years as a professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Biology at the California Institute of Technology, he is now the Chief Scientific Officer of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. Koch has been influential in arguing that consciousness can be approached using modern tools of neurobiology, and in addition to authoring three books on the topic of consciousness, often advocates for a modern variant of panpsychism, the ancient philosophical belief that some minimal form of consciousness can be found in any biological organism. Each month, Koch pens a popular column in Scientific American Mind called Consciousness Redux.