Neuroscience Faculty

Core Faculty

Andy Alexander

Assistant Professor
Psychological & Brain Sciences
Andy Alexander is interested in interactions between the neocortex, thalamus, and extended hippocampal formation that subserve spatial cognition and mnemonic processes.

F. Gregory Ashby

Distinguished Professor
Psychological & Brain Sciences
Professor Ashby is interested in the basic cognitive and neural mechanisms that mediate human learning. His approach combines experimental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and mathematical modeling.

Michael Beyeler

Assistant Professor
Computer Science
Psychological & Brain Sciences
Computational Vision, Computational Neuroscience, Neuroengineering, Human-Computer Interaction.

Jean Carlson

Professor
Department of Physics
Cognitive neuroscience, learning, memory, categorization, decision processes in perception and cognition.

Dennis Clegg

Professor
Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology
Dr Clegg's research focuses on developing cures for blindness using embryonic, iPS, and adult stem cells.

Adele Doyle

Assistant Professor
Mechanical Engineering
Neural & cardiovascular tissue engineering/regenerative medicine. Stem cells, mechanobiology, molecular control systems.

Miguel P. Eckstein

Professor
Psychological & Brain Sciences
Dr. Eckstein is interested in how biological organisms and artificial intelligent agents visually sense the world and make decisions. He uses computational modeling, cognitive neuroscience and behavioral measurement techniques.

Stu Feinstein

Professor
Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology
Normal and Pathological Action of the Microtubule-Associated Protein Tau; Alzheimer’s and related dementias.

Steven Fisher

Research Professor
Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology
Structure and function in the vertebrate retina with an emphasis on mechanisms underlying photoreceptor degeneration and the role of glial cells in normal and injured or diseased retina.

Michael S. Gazzaniga

Distinguished Professor
Psychological & Brain Sciences
Dr. Gazzaniga is currently engaged in several scholarly projects examining how codes play a role in understanding how neurons become mind.

Barry Giesbrecht

Professor
Psychological & Brain Sciences
Visual attention; Cognitive neuroscience; Brain Imaging; Exercise physiology.

Michael Goard

Associate Professor
Psychological & Brain Sciences
Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology
The Goard lab focuses on how the mammalian neocortex processes and stores incoming sensory information.

Scott Grafton

Distinguished Professor
Psychological & Brain Sciences
Professor Grafton is interested in how people organize movement into goal-oriented action.

Emily G. Jacobs

Associate Professor
Psychological & Brain Sciences
Uses human brain imaging techniques (fMRI) and endocrinology to determine the impact of sex steroid hormones on brain morphology and function.

Skirmantas Janusonis

Professor
Psychological & Brain Sciences
Spatial and temporal organization of stochastic axon systems in the brain.

Ron Keiflin

Assistant Professor
Psychological & Brain Sciences
Neural circuits of appetitive associative learning and decision-making; Circuits alterations in maladaptive behaviors (e.g. addiction)

Sung Soo Kim

Assistant Professor
Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology
Neural circuit dynamics and behavior; navigation in a visual environment; neural mechanisms of object selection and decision-making.

Tod Kippin

Professor
Psychological & Brain Sciences
Our lab focuses on the factors that lead to drug addiction and the impact of substance abuse on the brain. A major component of our research is development of biosensors to enhance our understanding of neurochemistry and pharmacology.

Kenneth S. Kosik

Distinguished Professor
Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology
Neural plasticity including the molecular basis of plasticity and neurodegenerative disease-related impairments related to plasticity and proteostasis. Neural development and evolution from a molecular and genetic perspective.

Regina Lapate

Assistant Professor
Psychological & Brain Sciences
Our lab uses neuroimaging and causal methods to investigate neural mechanisms underlying emotion perception, metacognition and emotion regulation.

Matthieu Louis

Associate Professor
Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology
Combining theory and experimentation to understand how navigational decisions come about in terms of neural-circuit computation.

Mike Miller

Professor
Psychological & Brain Sciences
Dr. Miller is interested in the psychological and neural processes underlying human memory and decision-making.

Nina Miolane

Assistant Professor
Electrical & Computer Engineering
Nina directs the Geometric Intelligence Lab, whose goal is to reveal the geometric signatures of natural and artificial intelligence and to build next–generation intelligent systems: Geometric AI.

Craig Montell

Distinguished Professor
Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology
Molecular and cellular basis of animal behavior in flies and mosquitoes.

Kyle Ratner

Associate Professor
Psychological & Brain Sciences
Kyle investigates how biological systems interact with social contexts to influence perceptions of the self and others.

Benjamin Reese

Professor Emeritus
Psychological & Brain Sciences
Organization, development and plasticity of the retina and visual pathway.

Julie H. Simpson

Associate Professor
Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology
Systems neuroscience, neuroethology, and genetics, applied to dissecting the neural circuits that control a flexible motor sequence of grooming in fruit flies.

Ikuko Smith

Assistant Professor
Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology
Psychological & Brain Sciences
Information processing by neural circuitry with a special focus on the role of active dendrites in nonlinear modes of synaptic integration.

Spencer LaVere Smith

Associate Professor
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Exploring neural circuitry and illuminating its function, using new neurotechnology.

William Smith

Professor
Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology
We research in two primary areas: (1) the mechanisms of neural tube closure in Xenopus and Ciona; (2) and behavior and neural circuity in Ciona.

Thomas Sprague

Assistant Professor
Psychological & Brain Sciences
In the Perception, Cognition, and Action Lab (PCA Lab), we seek to understand how the brain encodes and transforms neural representations of sensory information in service of dynamic behavioral demands.

Karen K. Szumlinski

Professor
Psychological & Brain Sciences
Dr. Szumlinski’s major research interest concerns the biochemical mechanisms underlying the changes in brain and behavior produced by chronic exposure to drugs of abuse, in particular psychomotor stimulants and alcohol.

René Weber

Professor
Department of Communication
In the Media Neuroscience Lab (MNL) we study attention disorders and media-multitasking, aggressive conduct disorders and media violence, moral conflict and narrative performance, and the neural mechanisms of persuasion, flow experiences, and general cognitive control.

Soojin Yi

Professor
Ecology, Evolution & Marine Biology
We study evolutionary questions using comparative genomic and epigenomic methods. A main research goal of the Yi lab is to understand how epigenetic regulatory mechanisms evolve and impacts phenotypes, such as gene expression, phenotypic plasticity, and diseases.

Hongbo Yu

Assistant Professor
Dr. Yu combines behavioral experiments, neuroscience and computational modeling to understand the relationship between emotion (e.g., guilt, gratitude) and morality and their neural representations.

Affiliate Faculty

Dzwokai (Zach) Ma

Associate Professor
Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology
Mechanistic and functional study of viral host interaction.

Wendy Meiring

Professor
Statistics and Applied Probability
Statistical Methods and Data Analyses, Including For Brain Imaging and Other Neuroscience Data; Statistical Methods for Analyzing Spatial and Temporal Processes; Computational Statistics and Machine Learning; Uncertainty Quantification.

Jeff Moehlis

Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Dynamics and control of neural populations for treatment of Parkinson's disease, coupled oscillators, synchronization, decision making, biological dynamics, machine learning.

Denise Montell

Distinguished Professor
Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology
Combination of molecular, genetic, and state-of-the-art imaging approaches to define and solve fundamental questions in cell and developmental biology with implications for neurodegenerative disease, ischemic diseases and cancer.

Arnab Mukherjee

Assistant Professor
Chemical Engineering
Neuroimaging, MRI, biochemical imaging of the GI tract.

Todd Oakley

Professor
Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology
Macroevolution, phylogenetics, bioluminescence, vision, molecular evolution, complexity, marine organismal biology.

Linda Petzold

Distinguished Professor
Mechanical Engineering
Computer Science
Computational methods, mathematical modeling, and machine learning, with application to a wide range of problems from systems biology, neuroscience and engineering.

Joel Rothman

Distinguished Professor
Wilcox Family Chair in Biotechnology
Director, Biomolecular Science and Engineering Program
Regulation of development and differentiation; regulation of programmed cell death and cell division; mechanisms of tumorigenesis.

Ambuj Singh

Professor
Computer Science
Data-centric modeling of systems and he focuses on the development of new methods that can be applied to real-world applications.

Sebastian Streichan

Assistant Professor
Department of Physics
We use ideas and concepts from physics, computer science, and mathematics to ask how embryos get in shape, and how organs function.

Luke Theogarajan

Professor
Electrical & Computer Engineering
Novel reporters for neural activity, CMOS image sensors and circuits for neurotechnology.

Megan Valentine

Professor
Mechanical Engineering
Mechanics of cells and tissues; design of bio-inspired materials with applications to packaging, healthcare and robotics; instrument development.

Thomas Weimbs

Professor
Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology
Molecular mechanisms underlying polycystic kidney disease, and SNARE fusion proteins.

Leslie Wilson

Research Professor
Distinguished Professor Emeritus
Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology
Mechanism and regulation of microtubule polymerization and dynamics; mechanism of action of microtubule-targeted anticancer drugs and microtubule-regulatory proteins.

Max Wilson

Assistant Professor
Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology
Combines tools from Biology, Engineering, and Physics to understand the cell’s perceptual field.