Prof. Dr. Xenia Kobeleva

I am an assistant professor (tenure track, full-time) in Neurostimulation at Ruhr University Bochum (RUB), group leader of RUB’s Computational Neurology Group, and senior physician at the University Hospital Knappschaftskrankenhaus Bochum (Department of Neurology).

I am an expert in neurodegenerative diseases and computational brain modelling. My research thus follows an interdisciplinary approach in which I integrate neurological topics with advanced mathematical models. Specifically, I investigate neurodegenerative diseases (such as Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy body disease, ALS, and HSP), focusing on neural mass modeling, hybrid modeling and state-dependent neurostimulation (e.g., with TMS-EEG). As a result, my research contributes to neuroimaging biomarkers of neurodegenerative diseases and digital twin technologies for neurological applications.

Due to the interdisciplinary nature of my work, I am not only appointed as an assistant professor at the RUB Faculty of Medicine, but also as an affiliated professor at the RUB Faculty of Informatics. I am an executive board member and PI at the RUB Institute for Neuroinformatics (INI), PI at the RUB Science Hub Neuroscience, and PI and founding member of the Bernstein Node Bochum.

Being a neurologist and a computational neuroscientist, I truly identify as a translational researcher. On the one hand, translation means that I take problems that are brought up by patients affected by neurodegenerative diseases, medical doctors and me in clinical practice and translate them into research questions. On the other hand, translation also means that I take the solutions that have been developed in my lab and translate them back to the clinic, so that research results contribute to improving patients’ lives.

I am a strong believer in freedom of information and ethical practice in research and strive to bring principles of open science to the clinical research community (making research more reproducible, robust, and inclusive). Furthermore, I am also interested in the digital transformation of healthcare, and how to use tools of medical informatics for the benefit of patients and health-care workers.

The promotion and support of the next generation of applied scientists at the intersection of computational neurology, clinical research, and computer science is very important to me. In my diverse team, I try to bring together post-docs, doctoral students, graduate and undergraduate students from the fields of medicine, computer science, neuroscience, and mathematics. I engage in the RUB International Graduate School of Neuroscience and I am open to thesis supervision of RUB students who want to contribute to the Computational Neurology Group. In my group, I also regularly offer paid positions for student research assistants and doctoral students (see the Join our team! page).

To get acquainted with my individual research contributions, please see

• the publications page on this website,
• my PubMed records,
• and my Google Scholar profile.

In addition, you may also

• follow my posts on Bluesky,
• follow my posts on X (legacy),
• and check my Github page.

A non-technical description of my group’s research, addressed to a non-expert audience, is availabe at the non-expert information page and information for German patients will be presented in the future on the "Patienten-Informations-Seite" (in German language) (under construction).