See information on applying for UWIN’s postdoctoral fellowships.
Current UWIN Postdoctoral Fellows
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Michael Beyeler works in collaboration with Ione Fine in Psychology and Ariel Rokem at the eScience Institute. His research focuses on improving stimulation algorithms for retinal prostheses. In patients with retinal diseases such as macular degeneration or retinitis pigmentosa, retinal prostheses are being developed to directly stimulate remaining healthy cells in the retina. However, translating visual input into electrical pulses that elicit desired visual perception is nontrivial and requires a deep understanding of the sensory processing in the human retina. Michael aims to further our understanding of how these devices interact with the underlying retinal circuitry by leveraging both computational and data-driven approaches, in order to develop the algorithms and tools that can power novel sight restoration technologies. Michael received a doctoral degree in Computer Science from the University of California, Irvine as well as a Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering and a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from ETH Zurich, Switzerland. |
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Nick Foti works in collaboration with Emily Fox in Statistics and Adrian KC Lee in Speech and Hearing Sciences. Nick’s research interests are in developing machine learning methods that can be applied to phenomena exhibiting complex dependencies. His work at the UW focuses on uncovering the effective connections between the auditory sensory areas of the brain and the attentional network. To do this, he works with extremely noisy time series data arising from magnetoencepholography (MEG) recordings. This work has implications for both neuroscience research and for developing smart hearing aid technology. Nick holds a doctoral degree in Computer Science from Dartmouth College and a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Mathematics from Tufts University. |
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Gabrielle Gutierrez works in collaboration with Eric Shea-Brown in Applied Mathematics and Fred Rieke in Physiology and Biophysics. Her research is aimed at understanding how neural circuits in the retina implement functional computations using the rich assortment of available biophysical mechanisms. Using a combination of experimental electrophysiology techniques, normative theories, and computational modeling, Gabrielle seeks to understand how local neuron properties contribute to global circuit function. Her work will provide insight into the multiple solutions that allow neural circuits to adapt to the immensely complex stimuli encountered in nature. Gabrielle holds a doctoral degree in Neuroscience from Brandeis University. She received her bachelor’s degree from Barnard College, Columbia University, where she majored in Physics and minored in Applied Math. Gabrielle was awarded an IGERT training fellowship at Brandeis. |
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Thomas Richner works in collaboration with Chet Moritz in Rehabilitation Medicine and Adrienne Fairhall in Physiology and Biophysics. His research focuses on developing strategies for delivering proprioceptive (awareness of body position) information to the central nervous system through a neural interface. Restoring proprioception, the sense of where a limb is in space, would greatly increase the utility of a neuroprosthesis system, but specifically modulating proprioceptive neurons within the central nervous system is a major challenge. His approach leverages optogenetics to target this pathway. Tom received a doctoral degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin, a bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis, and a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Northland College. |
Emeritus UWIN Postdoctoral Fellows
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Miriam Ben-Hamo works in collaboration with Horacio de la Iglesia in Biology and Matt Reynolds in Electrical Engineering. Miriam’s research is aimed at testing and validating newly developed wireless sleep research technology in order to explore questions regarding the regulation and function of sleep. She focuses on changes in sleep architecture during breeding and development in a social group of owl monkeys. Miriam has a doctoral degree in Ecological Physiology from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, where she was a recipient of the Negev Graduate Fellowship, and a bachelor’s degree in Biology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. She comes to the UW after holding Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer positions at Princeton University. In addition to being named a WRF Innovation Postdoctoral Fellow, her awards include a Postdoctoral Fellowship for Women in Science from the Israeli Council for Higher Education. |
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Hannah Choi works in collaboration with Eric Shea-Brown in Applied Mathematics and Wyeth Bair in Biological Structure. Her research aims to understand the circuit mechanisms underlying adaptable responses in the visual system. She combines mathematical modeling and experimental methods at the level of populations of spiking neurons to investigate the mechanisms that allow for contextual modulation of neuronal circuits. This research is critical to understanding how the nervous system encodes and responds to real-world stimuli over time. Hannah has a doctoral degree in Applied Mathematics from Northwestern University and a bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley, where she was a recipient of an Integrative Cancer Biology Program Fellowship at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. |
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Guillaume Lajoie works in collaboration with Adrienne Fairhall and Eberhard Fetz in Physiology and Biophysics and Nathan Kutz in Applied Mathematics. His research interests lie at the interface of mathematics and theoretical neurosciences, focusing on problems involving information processing in externally driven neural systems. His work at the UW aims to elucidate mechanisms of artificially induced plasticity in the motor cortex by recurrent brain-computer interfaces. Guillaume has a doctoral degree in Applied Mathematics from the UW and master’s and bachelor’s degrees in Mathematics from the University of Ottawa, Canada. He comes back to the UW after holding a Bernstein Fellow of Computational Neuroscience position at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Goettingen, Germany. In addition to a WRF Innovation Postdoctoral Fellowship, his awards include a graduate research scholarship from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and a postdoctoral scholarship from the Fonds de recherche nature et technologies du Québec. |
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Eatai Roth works with Tom Daniel in the Department of Biology. His research seeks to reveal fundamental patterns of control and computation that underlie complex animal locomotor behaviors. He focuses on postural control in flying moths, co-opting tools from control theory, machine learning, and system identification to extract models from complex and high-dimensional behavioral data. Eatai comes to the UW with a doctoral degree in Mechanical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University, a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from University of Pittsburgh and a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from Washington University in St. Louis. In addition to being named a WRF Innovation Postdoctoral Fellow, his awards include an ARCS Foundation Scholarship and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. |
