Professor Kim "Avrama" Blackwell is the principal investigator of the CENlab. She is professor and departmental executive officer of the Roy J. Carver Department of Biomedical Engineering, a member of the Iowa Neuroscience Institute, and an affiliate of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Neuroscience.

Blackwell is a world leader in the computational modeling of calcium dynamics and signaling pathways underlying neuronal plasticity. Her research investigates the mechanisms whereby particular spatiotemporal patterns of inputs produce changes in synaptic plasticity and intrinsic excitability. As part of this research, she creates novel software, both using deterministic approaches and stochastic approaches, either stand-alone or working in conjunction with other neural modeling software, in order to address otherwise intractable problems.