2007 Finalist Marianne Fyhn, Ph.D., Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway
Marianne Hafting Fyhn, for her essay "The Grid Map in the Brain." Dr. Fyhn was born in Morehead City, North Carolina, USA, and grew up in Bergen, Norway. She did her undergraduate studies in biology at the Universities of Bergen, Oslo, and Tromsø before completing her master’s thesis at the University of Tromsø in 1999 with work in Arctic biology at Spitsbergen. In 2000 she started her graduate work in neurobiology at the Centre for the Biology of Memory under the supervision of Dr. May-Britt and Dr. Edvard Moser at The Norwegian University for Science and Technology, Trondheim. She performed in vivo recordings of spatially modulated neurons from the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex of freely behaving rats and discovered "grid cells," which are neurons in entorhinal cortex with a remarkable hexagonal activity pattern. Since receiving her Ph.D. in 2005, she has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for the Biology of Memory. Dr. Fyhn is a hiking, mountaineering, and fishing enthusiast. She has two small children with whom she enjoys outdoor activities.
For Dr. Fyhn’s full essay, see Science Online at sciencemag.org.