Andrew French
Professor
Email: andrew.french@dal.ca
Phone: 902-494-1302
Mailing Address:
3-C1, Tupper Building, 5850 College Street, PO Box 15000, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, B3H 4R2
Research Topics:- Neuroscience
- Neurophysiology
- Biophysics
- Sensory physiology
- Mechanosensory
- Chemosensory
- Vision
- Neural coding
- Bioinformatics
Education
- ARIC (University of Salford, UK)
- MSc (University of Essex, UK)
- PhD (University of Essex, UK)
- PDF (University of Alberta)
Research interests
Professor French’s research interests are in the general area of sensory coding. He investigates how physical stimuli, such as touch, light or odors, are converted into nervous signals by processes of sensory transduction, and how this sensory information is transmitted to the central nervous system.
Selected publications
- French, A.S., Li, A.W., Meisner, S. and Torkkeli, P.H. (2014) Upstream open reading frames and Kozak regions of a set of assembled transcriptome sequences from the spider Cupiennius salei. Gene 539: 203–208.
- French, A.S., Meisner, S., Su, C-Y and Torkkeli, P.H. (2014) CO2 and fruit odor transduction in Drosophila olfactory neurons. What controls their dynamic properties? PLoS ONE 9: e86347.
- Schmitz, J., Höger, U., Torkkeli, P.H. and French, A.S. (2012) Calcium buffering and clearance in spider mechanosensory neurons. Journal of Comparative Physiology A 198: 477–483.
- French, A.S. and Pfeiffer, K. (2011) Measuring entropy in continuous and digitally filtered neural signals. Journal of Neuroscience Methods 196: 81–87.
- French, A.S., Torkkeli, P.H. and Schuckel, J. (2011) Dynamic characterization of Drosophilaantennal olfactory neurons indicates multiple opponent signaling pathways in odor discrimination. Journal of Neuroscience 31: 861-869.
Selected awards and honours
- 16th Sarrazin Lecturer of the Canadian Physiological Society, 1993
- Award for Recognition of 25 Years Continuous Support, Medical Research Council of Canada, 1996
- Filosofian tohtori honoris causa (Honorary doctoral degree in Natural Sciences) University of Oulu, Finland, 2009
Memberships
- Canadian Physiological Society: Treasurer 1982‑85; Vice‑President 1988-89; President 1989-90; Past-President 1990-91
- Society for Neuroscience
- Canadian Association for Neuroscience
- International Society for Neuroethology
Employment
- 1970‑75 Assistant Professor of Physiology, University of Alberta
- 1975‑82 Associate Professor of Physiology, University of Alberta
- 1976‑77 Visiting Fellow, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
- 1982‑96 Professor of Physiology, University of Alberta
- 1995-2000 Professor and Head of Physiology and Biophysics, Dalhousie University
- 1999- Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Dalhousie University
- 2000- Professor of Physiology and Biophysics, Dalhousie University