Dr. Zikopoulos earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees in Biology in 1996 and 1998, and then continued his graduate studies to earn a PhD in Neurobiology from the department of Biology, University of Crete, Greece in 2004. During his studies, Dr. Zikopoulos received research fellowships and additional training from the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, University of Manchester, UK, the Department of Biological Sciences, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK, and the Institute of Marine Biology of Crete, Greece. Dr. Zikopoulos then completed a post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of Health Sciences at Boston University, under the mentorship of Dr. Barbas. In 2008, Dr. Zikopoulos joined the Research Faculty of the Human Physiology Program of the Department of Health Sciences at Boston University and has been an Assistant Professor since 2015.

Dr. Zikopoulos is the director of the Human Systems Neuroscience Laboratory and a co-Investigator in the Neural Systems Laboratory. Dr. Zikopoulos’ research interests focus on the investigation of structural, neurochemical and molecular features, underlying the organization and synaptic interactions of cortical, thalamic, and amygdalar brain circuits in primates, including humans, and their disruption in disease. Increasingly, the lab’s research has been focusing on processes that shape network dynamics and the delicate balance of excitation and inhibition, which are consistently disrupted in neurologic and psychiatric disorders, like autism, schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety. Dr. Zikopoulos’ laboratory develops, optimizes, and uses high-resolution experimental and imaging approaches and is equipped with state of the art optical, laser-confocal, and electron microscopes. Experimental approaches are complemented by advanced computational techniques that make it possible to quantitatively study human brain tissue at very high resolution and model complex relationships between brain structure and function in health and disease, providing a solid foundation to integrate bench and clinical research across neuroscience disciplines.