Michael Segal MD, PhD

Dr. Michael M. Segal did his undergraduate work at Harvard and his MD and PhD at Columbia, where his thesis project outlined rules for the types of chemical synapses that will form in a nervous system. After his residency in pediatric neurology at Columbia, he moved to Harvard Medical School, where he joined the faculty and developed the micro island system for studying neural networks with as few as one or two brain neurons. Using this system, he developed a reductionist model of epilepsy, work that won him national and international Young Investigator awards and set the stage for later work on the molecular mechanism of attention deficit disorder. 

In the 1980s he started teaching at Harvard about the relationship between computer and biological neural networks, as well as publishing about the relationship between artificial intelligence and biological neural networks. He patterned the SimulConsult software after the way that experienced clinicians think about diagnosis. He is on the Electronic Communication Committee of the Child Neurology Society and has been on the Scientific Program Committee of the American Medical Informatics Association.