Speakers

Unfortunately, Eve Marder is not able to attend the meeting.

Jorge Golowasch

Dr. Golowasch is Professor of Biology and holds a secondary appointment in Mathematics at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). Neuronal ionic currents are not expressed in isolation, but as coordinated sets of currents. They are furthermore expressed at very variable levels even in neurons of identical electrical phenotype. His research focuses on understanding the mechanisms of coordination of expression of variable intrinsic ionic currents by neurons, and their role in the generation of relatively constant neuronal activity patterns. He uses electrophysiological, computational and cell and molecular tools to monitor and manipulate sets of ionic currents simultaneously. His work uses neurons from a crustacean central pattern generator, as well as mammalian neurons both in culture and in slices.

Alipasha Vaziri

Dr. Vaziri is the Associate Director of the Kavli Neuronal Systems Institute, and serves as an Associate Professor at The Rockefeller University where he studies how large-scale dynamics of neuronal networks are related to brain functions and behavior. To do so, he develops new high-speed optical techniques that push the boundaries on spatial and temporal resolution, as well as volume size and depth for recording dynamic interactions of neuronal populations in awake behaving animals. He holds a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Vienna, and completed postdoctoral training at the National Institute of Standards and Technology as well as the University of Maryland. He subsequently worked a research scientist at HHMI Janelia Research Campus.

Maria Neimark Geffen

Dr. Geffen is interested in the way the brain encodes information about the world around us and how our perception is shaped by our emotional state and experience. She combines computational and biological approaches to study the mechanisms behind dynamic auditory perception, memory and learning. Before becoming an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Geffen was a fellow at the Center for Physics and Biology at Rockefeller University. She received her Ph.D from Harvard University and completed her undergraduate education at Princeton University.

Nathaniel Sawtell

Dr. Sawtell is an Associate Professor of Neuroscience at Columbia University and a Principal Investigator at Columbia's Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute. The goal of research in the Sawtell laboratory is to forge detailed links between the properties of neural circuits and their functions. Their studies of weakly electric fish have shown how a specific form of synaptic plasticity operating within a well-characterized cerebellum-like circuit functions to predict and cancel out sensory inputs generated by the animal’s own behavior. Similar circuits are also present at the initial stage of mammalian auditory processing in a structure known as the dorsal cochlear nucleus. An additional goal of the lab is to test the hypothesis that the dorsal cochlear nucleus functions to predict and cancel self-generated sounds.

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