Center for Mind, Brain, Computation and Technology

Lisa Yamada is a PhD candidate in Electrical Engineering, working with Professor Paul Nuyujukian in the Brain Interfacing Laboratory at Stanford University. She is interested in applying data science and engineering tools for medical applications towards higher quality and more equitable care. As a computational neuroscientist and clinical research coordinator, she is currently investigating quantitative measures for seizure analyses using human neuroelectrophysiology data (e.g., intracortical EEGs of participants with refractory epilepsy).

Javan is an Applied Physics PhD student, working in Surya Ganguli's lab. Javan's research focuses on elucidating biophysical parameters that determine the geometric structure of neural population activity. Understanding how cell-type heterogeneity, varying time scales, and connectivity conspire to shape neural activity in state space could shed light on the unique computational style of the brain and guide future experiments. Before arriving at Stanford, Javan double-majored in Neuroscience and Physics and minored in Mathematics at NYU.

Julia is a PhD student in the Electrical Engineering department. She currently works with Prof. Scott Linderman on developing and fitting statistical models to uncover structure of neuroscience-related datasets. She graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 2020 with a BS in Biomedical Engineering, Mathematics, and Applied Mathematics and Statistics. At Stanford, she is the social chair for Women in EE and a member of the campus chapter of the American Society for Engineering Education. Outside of research, Julia enjoys teaching, reading, and climbing.

Originally from Billings, Montana, Michael is an Electrical Engineering Ph.D. student advised by Paul Nuyujukian. His research interests include understanding the causal relationships between cortical dynamics and behavior, as well as developing brain-machine interfaces for the treatment of neurological disorders. Michael has served as a mentor for Stanford’s FAST, SURF, and high school research experience programs, and he has held leadership roles in local Eta Kappa Nu and Special Olympics chapters. Before starting his Ph.D.

(She/her/hers) I am a PhD student in the Physics department at Stanford. My goal is to leverage my Physics background to advance the understanding of the computations involved in social cognition, through electrophysiology measurements and the use of recent physics-driven computational techniques.

Pronouns: he/him
I'm a graduate student in the Neurosciences program at Stanford advised by Dan Yamins and Justin Gardner. I'm broadly interested in our ability to efficiently deploy our visual attention given 1) the vast amounts of visual information we perceive and 2) our motivations, goals, and thoughts. My work sits at the intersection of psychology, machine learning, and neuroscience.

When I'm not working, I enjoy playing sports and video games, watching TV, and spending time with friends and family.

Satchel (he/him) graduated with a BA in Chemistry from Whitman College in 2014. He then learned the fundamentals of Computer Science and joined a computational research team focused on the Retina at Stanford. There he developed new model architectures and training  pipelines for modeling salamander retinae; he also developed mouse VR software and hardware. He now is in the Psychology PhD program at Stanford where he studies Cognition through emergent phenomena in computational modeling.

Sedona received her BS in Neurobiology and Biochemistry from the University of Washington. Currently, she is completing her PhD in the Neurosciences program under the advising of Dr. Raag Airan, and her research focuses on characterizing the effects of ketamine and other psychedelic drugs on reward processing and cognition in rodent chronic pain and stress models. In addition to research, Sedona is passionate about educational equity in STEM and has had numerous experiences teaching and mentoring undergraduate and high school students.

Hey, I'm Jiahao (pronounced Ja-ho)! I grew up in the bay area and graduated from UC Santa Barbara in 2016. Afterwards, I worked for 3.5 years as a lab manager/technician until I started my Ph.D. at Stanford. I'm a co-mentored student in the labs of Axel Brunger and Liang Feng studying how the nanoscale distribution and organization of proteins at the synapse have a functional affect on synaptic transmission. To do so, I'm building fun molecular tools for cryo-electron tomography!

Yandan received her B.S. in Neuroscience from the University of New Hampshire. There she studied mood disorders with a rat model. With her curiosities about how the central nervous system interacts with other systems, she then enrolled in a Master's program in Human Physiology at Boston University to study brain vasculature health in an aging mouse model. Then, she starts to be interested in studying neural mechanisms underlying different functions. She joined the Liberles lab at Harvard Medical School to study the interoceptive system to taste the beauty of circuit neuroscience.