About Markus
Markus Pfaff, Arendal, Norway, May 2016
Hello!
I'm a 26-year-old student from Arendal, a small town on the southern coast of Norway, and the inspiration for the Disney movie Frozen (no joke).
These days I’m living and working in southern Germany, in the sunny town of Freiburg: Jewel of the Black Forest!
My professional goal is to research and develop long-term biocompatible brain implants — neural prostheses or brain-computer interfaces — which restore cognitive function to victims of stroke, traumatic brain injury, or neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Or alternatively, to transform the human race into kick-ass cyborgs to fight in the impending AI apocalypse war. Either is fine.
In May 2018 I graduated from a tri-national master’s program in neuroscience, taken jointly at the Universities of Freiburg (Germany), Strasbourg (France), and Basel (Switzerland). INB4: Yes, my classmates and I did indeed endure one heck of a nightmarish commute. During my two years in the program, I acquired a taste for computer programming and data science. I’ve found that coding often feels more like an artistic endeavor than actual work. I love the challenge of constant problem-solving, and the fact that I create something new every day. Plus, there’s just something about the rapid feedback loop of writing and testing code that is like crack for my brain.
I obtained my bachelor’s degree from Creighton University (Omaha, Nebraska, USA), where I majored in biology, ingested copious amounts of donuts, and experienced the pinnacle of college culture that is the consumption of beer out of red plastic cups — it’s not just in the movies, really! During my last two years of college I was involved in a behavioral psychopharmacology research project under the direction of Dr. Dustin Stairs. Primarily we studied how adolescent nicotine use is linked to amphetamine use in adulthood. We also, among other things, looked at treatment options for methamphetamine addiction, comparing Chantix to an experimental compound named GZ-793A.
Me and the rest of Dr. Stairs' Behavioral Psychopharmacology team. Presenting at the Midwestern Psychological Association conference in Chicago, April 2014. (I'm #3 from the left). Photo credit: Marshall Schroeder
Hobbies & Leisure Activities
Analogue synthesizers, field recording, drums, piano, reading, podcast-listening, cooking, trail running, geocaching, downhill skiing, lucid dreaming, photography, e-learning
These are a few of my favorite things
Making mindless chores more enjoyable by listening to podcasts such as Hello Internet, The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, or Science Vs.
Taking study break to watch a video by one of my favorite YouTube channels, such as ViHart, Kurzgesagt, Veritasium, Vsauce, SmarterEveryDay, MinutePhysics, CGP Grey, Numberphile, Periodic Videos, Physics Girl, 3Blue1Brown, TED-ed, Geography Now, or YourMovieSucksDOTorg.
Reading any of the books by authors Oliver Sacks, Malcolm Gladwell, David Sedaris, Michael Pollan, or Richard Feynman. A few specific books which I personally love are: Flowers for Algernon (Daniel Keyes); Moonwalking With Einstein (Joshua Foer); A Walk in the Woods (Bill Bryson); Algorithms to Live By (Brian Christian); Trust Me, I’m Lying (Ryan Holiday); Phantoms in the Brain (V. S. Ramachandran); Ready Player One (Ernest Cline); and all Harry Potter books (J. K. Rowling).
Some films I can re-watch time and again are Paris Texas (1984), Waking Life (2001), Fight Club (1999), Office Space (1999), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), Groundhog Day (1993), Blade Runner (1982), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), The Matrix (1999), The Shining (1980), Weird Science (1985), A Clockwork Orange (1972), Donnie Darko (2001), American Beauty (1999), The Bothersome Man (2006), Trainspotting (1996), Koyaanisqatsi (1982), It's Such A Beautiful Day (2012), Idiocracy (2006), Back to the Future (1985).
I'll occasionally revisit really good TV Shows like South Park (1997-), Penn & Teller’s Bullsh!t (2003-2010), Black Mirror (2011-), Cosmos (1980, 2014), or Twin Peaks (1990-1991).
If time permits, I thoroughly enjoy immersing myself in the virtual worlds of PC Games like The Elder Scrolls Series, Half-Life Series, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Series, or Fallout New Vegas.
One of my favorite ways to chill with a large group friends is to spend a night playing fantasy tabletop games such as Magic: The Gathering or Dungeons & Dragons.
When it comes to music, I rarely care about song lyrics, and I’m usually more interested in evoking a some sort of particular mood. That said, whenever I listen to music, it is typically from any of the following music genres: ambient, saxophone jazz, 1940’s crooner jazz, 1920s-1950s female vocal jazz, piano jazz, electronica, instrumental lo-fi hip hop, breakbeat, synthwave, chillwave, vaporwave, bubblegum bass, progressive house, easy listening, prog rock with lots of Hammond organ, 70s disco, 80s synthpop, 90s rap, 00s eurodance, funk, cheesy new-age, italo disco, and various film scores. Some artists I particularly like are Brian Eno, Billie Holiday, Scott Hamilton, Frederic Chopin, Jean-Michel Jarre, Daft Punk, Chromeo, Crystal Castles, Depeche Mode, The Prodigy, Carbon Based Lifeforms, Solar Fields, Röyksopp, Bonobo, Tangerine Dream, Jesper Kyd, Ariel Pink, and Kero Kero Bonito. A randomly selected handful of favorite albums would be, say, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (Rick Wakeman), Temporarity (Michael Cassette), The Songs of Distant Earth (Mike Oldfield), Giza (Gatekeeper), Tarkus (Emerson, Lake & Palmer).