Headshot of Randy McIntosh.

Randy McIntosh

Director, Institute for Neuroscience and Neurotechnology
Simon Fraser University

Randy McIntosh is professor and BC leadership chair in neuroscience and technology transfer across the lifespan, and director of the Institute for Neuroscience and Neurotechnology, at Simon Fraser University. He holds a Ph.D. in psychology and neuroscience with a strong background in statistics. His research journey began at the Rotman Research Institute at the University of Toronto, where he developed a keen interest in understanding aging and cognition. McIntosh is the co-lead for the team that created The Virtual Brain (thevirtualbrain.org), a groundbreaking platform that unites global research efforts.

Explore more from The Transmitter

Illustration of differing lines of data.

Eighteen teams analyzed the same neurophysiology dataset—and got wildly different answers

The “Brainhack” hackathon revealed that disagreement in neuroscience runs deeper than most researchers suspect—even in electrophysiology, a field that prides itself on hard data.

By Gaëlle Chapuis, Mattia Chini
1 June 2026 | 7 min read
Research image of inputs into a single neuron in the mouse visual cortex.

‘Unbelievably beautiful’ evidence extends Nobel Prize-winning model of vision

Orientation tuning—the ability to distinguish a horizontal line from a vertical one or something in between—originates in the visual cortex, according to new mouse synapse imaging experiments.

By Claudia López Lloreda
29 May 2026 | 5 min read
Illustration of people connecting basic science.

Bringing basic biology back to INSAR

As the International Society for Autism Research has grown over the past two decades, basic science has become less central, Christine Wu Nordahl says. This year, she and other meeting organizers aimed to change that.

By Diana Kwon
28 May 2026 | 6 min read