Neural Control of Movement

I am a control theorist broadly interested in understanding how neural activity leads to complex motor behavior. How do populations of neurons coordinate their activity to carry out skilled and spontaneous movements? Recent technological advances allow us to simultaneously record from large populations of neurons (read our recent review discussing the scientific advances this has enabled!). Concurrently, new developments in machine learning have enabled very efficient ways of representing this data. I am developing computational techniques with experimental collaborators to better understand the neural control of movement and fundamental limitations of the sensorimotor control system. Here is a brief description of my research programs.

About Me

I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Theoretical Neuroscience at the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University, working with Liam Paninski and John Cunningham. I am affiliated with the Department of Statistics, and being generously funded by the Postdoc Mobility Fellowship offered by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

I completed my PhD in the Laboratory of Information and Decision Systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Techonology, working with Munther Dahleh in the Department of Electrical Engineering. Prior to this, I received an MSc from the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, working with Sridevi V. Sarma. I did my undergraduate degree at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland.

Here is a link to my CV. I can be reached at ss5513_at_columbia_dot_edu.