Clarissa Whitmire

Dr. Clarissa Whitmire is a group leader at the Queensland Brain Institute and a senior lecturer in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at The University of Queensland. She established her own laboratory there in 2023, following postdoctoral work at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine. Trained as a biomedical engineer, Whitmire earned her B.S. from North Carolina State University and her Ph.D. from Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University. She operates at the interface of neuroscience and engineering, generating novel insights into how sensory information is represented along the neuraxis, from neurons in the skin sensing external stimuli to central representations in the thalamocortical circuit.

The Whitmire lab employs a combination of tools to record from populations of neurons, manipulate their activity, and model underlying neural circuitry. Research is driven by the concept that perception arises from nonlinear neural codes early in the sensory pathway. Key investigations include mechanisms of thalamic encoding using neural recording and stimulation, state-dependent encoding in somatosensory thalamus, dynamic thalamic gating by sensory stimuli, sensory adaptation shifting thalamic firing from burst to tonic modes, temporal firing properties impacting cortical representation, closed-loop optogenetic control of thalamic patterns, synaptic connectivity in thalamocortical circuits, parallel sensory representations, thermosensory thalamus processing across model organisms, and neural population dynamics in mouse somatosensory thalamus. Whitmire has published key papers such as “Rapid sensory adaptation redux: a circuit perspective” (Neuron, 2016), “Information coding through adaptive gating of synchronized thalamic bursting” (Cell Reports, 2016), “Thalamic state control of cortical paired-pulse dynamics” (Journal of Neurophysiology, 2017), “Inferring thalamocortical monosynaptic connectivity in vivo” (Journal of Neurophysiology, 2021), “Thermosensory thalamus: parallel processing across model organisms” (Frontiers in Neuroscience, 2023), and “Brain-wide connectivity map of mouse thermosensory cortices” (Cerebral Cortex, 2023). She leads an ARC Discovery Project (2025–2028) on deep brain neurovascular coupling analysis using multimode fibre endoscopes.

Professional Email: c.whitmire@uq.edu.au