Magnasco heads the Laboratory of Integrative Neuroscience at Rockefeller University. Trained as a theoretical physicist in dynamical system theory, he moved to biophysics of cellular processes and then to computational neuroscience. He started the m2c2 collaboration with Diana Reiss in 2013, with the aim of extending high-throughput methods to the analysis of dolphin communication and cognition.
Magnasco received his MS in Physics from the University of La Plata, and a Ph. D. in Theoretical Physics from the University of Chicago, under the advice of Leo Kadanoff. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Rockefeller University under Mitchell Feigenbaum and at NEC Research Institute with Albert Libchaber and Peter A. Wolff. He then joined the facutly at Rockefeller University as a professor of biophysics and, later, integrative neuroscience.