Hello! My name is Maxwell Wang, former electrical engineer, now medical student interested in dynamical systems and neuromodulation. I recently received my PhD from Carnegie Mellon University joint between the Machine Learning Department and Neural Computation in spring, 2023 under the mentorship of Profs. Avniel Ghuman, Rob Kass, and Mark Richardson. My thesis focused on dynamical systems learning (Koopman operators learned via recurrent neural networks) and long-term brain dynamics (continuous analysis of intracranial recordings over days to weeks). My dream is to move away from coarse symptom-focused definitions of neurological/psychiatric disease and instead learn how to highlight the abnormal dynamical patterns of neural activity underlying them. 

Current news

My main thesis work is currently under review, working version of the manuscript can be found at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1B4OQsLtmRr5jbRsAUtaFlxpLHtJPH3_p/view?usp=sharing. Part of the work has been profiled at MIT Technology Review (https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/02/07/1067951/brains-week-order-chaos/). 

About me

I originally learned applied math from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign by taking classes during middle/high school through Prof. Jerry Uhl's Calculus and Mathematica curriculum. After dropping out of high school, I attended Washington Univ. in St. Louis on a full-ride scholarship and graduated early from their electrical engineering program in spring, 2016. Before graduate school, my previous research had focused on controlling networks of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (MIT CSAIL), structural brain connectomics and graph theory (UCSF/UCB), and functional brain responses to antidepressants (Pitt). I am currently finishing up medical school at Pitt (expected graduation date Dec. 2024). 

Choreographed by Cecil Slaughter