Markus Meister is professor of biology at the Caltech. He studied physics in Germany and then at Caltech, where he received his Ph.D. (1987). After postdoctoral research at Stanford, Markus moved to Harvard University, where he held the Jeff C. Tarr Chair in Molecular and Cellular Biology until 2012. Last summer he finally followed the siren song of Southern California and returned to his roots. Markus has been studying how large circuits of nerve cells work. In particular, his research opened a window onto the sophisticated computations performed by the retina. His long-term goal is a framework akin to electronics by which one can understand how structure and function of the neural circuits are related. He received the Lawrence C. Katz Prize for Innovative Research in Neuroscience and the Golden Brain Award for Vision and Brain Research from the Minerva Foundation.