He is best known for his role in the development of neuroimaging, as the founding director of the Functional Imaging Laboratory (FIL) at University College London (UCL) and as one of the initiators, in 2013, of the Human Brain Project (HBP), a ten-year European project coordinated by the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) with the goal of advancing knowledge in the fields of neuroscience, computing and brain-related medicine.

During World War II, his father fought on different fronts in the ranks of the Polish 1st Armoured Division (1 Dywizja Pancerna), his wartime engagements culminating in the Normandy theatre of operations (6 June – 12 September 1944).

The stories the doctor told about working as a surgeon for the resistance, operating in cellars in rudimentary conditions, left a profound impression on the teenage boy.

[4] Terry Jones was his mentor in neuroimaging, and Karl J. Friston, Chris Frith and Raymond Dolan were founding principal investigator colleagues at the FIL.

[10] In 2013, he took up a post as titular professor at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), in the laboratory of neuroscientist Henry Markram’s Blue Brain Project.

These techniques made it possible to demonstrate the existence of the brain's dynamic neuronal plasticity, both in its functions and in its structure, and both in normal subjects and in patients with neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders.

Two editions of the textbook Human Brain Function, co-edited by Frackowiak and published by Academic Press in 1997 and 2004, summarise the research conducted at the FIL over ten years.