Peter Carlen

Peter L. Carlen MD, FRCPC, obtained his MD from the University of Toronto and his Internship and Internal Medicine training at McGill University, completing his Neurology training at the University of Toronto. He did postgraduate training in cellular electrophysiology for 3 years at the Neurobiology Unit of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. He is a Professor in Medicine (Neurology), Physiology, and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto. He was formerly the Head of Neurology at the Addiction Research Foundation. In 1989, he was appointed Director of the Playfair Neuroscience Unit and Neuroscience Research at the University Health Network for a 10 year term, where he is now a Senior Scientist. He has over 350 peer-reviewed biomedical publications and 7 patents. His main research interests are mechanisms, pharmacology (gap junctions and pannexin channel blockers, cannabinoids), mitochondrial health/antioxidant therapy, control of neural synchrony and entrainment in epilepsy; blood brain barrier; and the use of human cerebral organoids to study epilepsy. He is also an active neurological clinician at the University Health Network (Toronto Western Hospital) with a practice focused mainly on patients with epilepsy.

Faculty Appointments

Department of Medicine (Neurology)
Department of Physiology
Department of Biomedical Engineering