Computational Neuroscience/Modeling

I am an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Yale University. My group studies computer architectures and systems for platforms ranging from data center servers to brain-computer interfaces. I am part of Yale's Computer Systems Lab and Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program, and am also a Fellow of Grace Hopper College.Modern computer systems integrate diverse accelerators and memory technologies, offering significant performance but complicating the programming models that software developers are familiar with. We build systems abstractions to improve hardware programmability, and architect hardware and systems software support to implement these abstractions efficiently.We have worked on the virtual memory abstraction with contributions to translation contiguity, memory transistency, and GPU address translation. Our work on coalesced TLBs has been integrated into AMD's chips, and our large page optimizations are now in Linux. Our work on giving GPUs direct access to storage, networking, and memory management services has influenced Radeon Open Compute's hyperscale computing stack. We have also been building heterogeneous architectures that advance the brain sciences to help treat neurological disorders and offer a path towards more explainable and transparent AI. In our HALO project, we are taping out ultra-low-power and flexible chips for brain-computer interfaces and evaluating them using data collected on non-human primates and epilepsy patients.

Dr. Blumenfeld's clinical and research work focuses on epilepsy, cognition and brain imaging. He directs Yale's Clinical Neuroscience Imaging Center (CNIC), a new multi-disciplinary core facility for innovative study and treatment of brain disorders. Teaching activities include a textbook titled Neuroanatomy Through Clinical Cases, Sinauer Assoc., Publ. 2002, 2010, 2020.

Rui Chang received his B.S. in Biological Sciences and Biotechnology from Tsinghua University, China in 2005. He then studied sensory transduction with Emily Liman and earned his Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the University of Southern California in 2011. He completed his postdoctoral training with Stephen Liberles at Harvard Medical School, where he investigated how body sensory cues are monitored by the brain through the vagus nerve, and how these internal signals regulate whole body physiology. He joined both the Department of Neuroscience and the Department of Cellular and Molecular Physiology at Yale University School of Medicine in January 2018.The Chang lab uses state-of-the-art molecular, genetic, and imaging approaches including single-cell gene expression profiling, virus-based anatomical mapping, in vivo imaging, optogenetics, and chemogenetics to reveal the physiological functions of diverse organ-to-brain circuits. The goal is to better understand the important body-brain interface, and to develop novel neuronal-based therapeutic strategies for disease intervention.

Steve Chang is an Associate Professor of Psychology and of Neuroscience at Yale University. He is also a member of the Wu Tsai Institute and the Kavli Institute for Neuroscience at Yale. He is the co-Director of Undergraduate Studies of Yale's Neuroscience (NSCI) major. His research aims to understand the neural circuit mechanisms of social cognition and social decision-making. Major research approaches include using naturalistic social interaction paradigms combined with state-of-the-art behavioral and neural technologies. The ultimate goal of the research program is to elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying social cognition and to learn how these processes may be disrupted in psychiatric conditions with social deficits.

Dr. Constable received his PhD in Medical Physics from the University of Toronto. He came to Yale as a postdoctoral fellow and has been here since. In addition to being the director of MRI in the Yale Magnetic Resonance Research Center, he runs two parallel labs. One lab is a neuroscience lab focused on mapping the functional organization of the brain through functional MRI measurements and understanding the relationship between this functional organization and behavior. Such developments are leading to new approaches to functionally phenotype individuals with applications in subtyping in brain disorders and disease. Dr. Constable's other lab is focused on the development of novel MRI devices with projects around low field MRI's that can be placed in doctor's offices, with the potential to make MRI much more accessible than it is in it's current form.

Dr. Philip Robert Corlett trained in Experimental Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychiatry with Professors Trevor Robbins and Paul Fletcher at the University of Cambridge. He won a Wellcome Trust Prize Studentship and completed his PhD on the brain bases of delusion formation in the Brain Mapping Unit, Department of Psychiatry. After a short postdoc, he was awarded the University of Cambridge Parke- Davis Exchange Fellowship in Biomedical Sciences which brought him to the Yale University Department of Psychiatry to explore the maintenance of delusions with Professors Jane Taylor and John Krystal. He was named a Rising Star and Future Opinion Leader by Pharmaceutical Marketing Magazine and joined the Yale faculty in 2011 where he will continue to explore the cognitive and biological mechanisms of delusional beliefs as well as predictive learning, habit formation and addiction.

Jonathan Demb is a Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Science with secondary appointments in the Department of Cellular & Molecular Physiology and the Department of Neuroscience. Dr. Demb obtained his doctoral degree from Stanford University and did postdoctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania. Demb was a faculty member at the University of Michigan before moving to Yale in 2011. The Demb lab investigates the cellular and synaptic mechanisms that enable visual processing by the mammalian retina. Major accomplishments include identifying fundamental nonlinearities at retinal synapses that mediate specialized spatial processing by retinal ganglion cells; elucidating the role of disinhibition in visual contrast processing; characterizing asymmetries between the retina's ON and OFF pathways; determining roles of NMDA-type glutamate receptors in ganglion cell receptive fields; identifying characteristic properties of cone-mediated vision in the mouse retina; developing the use of a glutamate sensor (iGluSnFR) for study of retinal circuitry; identifying novel amacrine cell circuits using optogenetic technology; and testing experimental therapies in mouse models of retinal disease. Demb is a Reviewing Editor at the Journal of Neuroscience and is on the Editorial Board of PLoS Biology. He was awarded the Cogan Award in 2013 from the Associate for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) to recognize his contributions to the field of retinal neuroscience.

Thierry Emonet is a Professor of Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology & Physics at Yale University. Trained as an astrophysicist before shifting his focus to biology, Emonet applies computational methods to the understanding of biological systems. By combining mathematical modeling with biophysical experiments, he shows how bacteria and insects navigate their environment. His discoveries include new insight on how microscopic organisms gather and react to information; how insects’ sense of smell enables them to navigate their environments; and how bacteria move and act collectively, akin to the behavior of a flock of birds. These findings have illuminated the natural world: they enable us to make predictions about how biological systems will act and react and how living systems respond to environmental fluctuations at all scales, from the smallest individual molecule to the population level. Before coming to Yale in 2007, Thierry studied physics at the ETH Zürich. He received his PhD (cum laude) in theoretical astrophysics from the University of La Laguna (Spain) in 1998, before doing postdocs at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder CO and The University of Chicago, discovering key mechanisms that enable magnetic field to float to the surface of the Sun to create Sunspots. During his postdoc Thierry became fascinated with the question of where individuality comes from and what is its functional role in life and he switched to biology. His work is supported by NIH, NSF, the Paul G Allen Family Foundation (Distinguished Allen Investigator), the Whitehall Foundation, the James S. McDonnell Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Outside of science, Thierry’s main interest is rock climbing and art. He grew up at the intersection of science and art and he is married to renowned sculptor Susan Clinard

Irina Esterlis is a clinical neuropsychologist and neuroreceptor imager with extensive training in the application of SPECT and PET to the study of mood, trauma, suicide, and comorbid disorders. Dr. Esterlis has developed two novel paradigms to interrogate both the acetylcholine and glutamatergic systems in vivo in human. Her lab was also the first to show ketamine-induced changes in human volunteers in vivo. She has received awards from Society of Nuclear Medicine, American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, Society for Biological Psychiatry, and American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Esterlis' current work includes the study of the metabotropic glutamatergic receptor involvement in bipolar depression and suicide, and synaptic alterations associated with depression, aging, and suicidality. The lab has expanded to add in vivo preclinical work to elucidate human findings.

Dr. Fineberg holds an MD PhD from the University of Iowa, where she studied the molecular mechanisms that control early fate decisions for neural stem cells in mouse brain.  She initially became interested in science as an undergraduate student at Oberlin College in physiology classes, where mechanism came alive in narratives about the evolutionary and individual history of the organism. She came to Yale in 2010 to pursue clinical and research training in psychiatry.  Her current research engages  both stories and brain-based mechanisms of mental illness, asking questions about how patient social experiences relate to neural circuits and learning mechanisms.Dr. Fineberg has been awarded young investigator grants from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention to pursue studies about social learning in Borderline Personality Disorder.

Tristan obtained a Master's of Science and Engineering in Materials from France before moving to Seoul, South Korea to complete a graduate degree in Neuroscience / Psychology at Korea University. During his PhD, Tristan learned extracellular electrophysiology and optogenetic techniques as well as animal behavior. He then moved to New York City as a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Attila Losonczy at Columbia University in 2017. During his postdoc, Tristan used multiphoton imaging to uncover the organization and function of hippocampal microcircuits responsible for our ability to learn and remember. A large portion of his research was also devoted to developing experimental methods that offered new vistas into the anatomical and physiological integration of individual neurons into large networks. Tristan joined the faculty of the Department of Neuroscience at Yale School of Medicine in 2024, and is a Wu Tsai Institute Investigator.

Dr. Goldfarb is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology and member of the Wu Tsai Institute. She completed her PhD in Psychology: Cognition & Perception with Dr. Elizabeth Phelps at New York University and a postdoctoral fellowship in the Departments of Diagnostic Radiology and Psychiatry with Dr. Rajita Sinha at Yale. Her research investigates different forms of learning and memory, how stress changes which parts of our experiences we remember, and the impact of memory on later behavior.

Dr. Xiaosi Gu is Professor of Psychiatry and Biomedical Informatics & Data Science at Yale School of Medicine. She received her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, followed by postdoctoral training at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London. A recipient of the prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), Dr. Gu is internationally recognized for her research in the field of computational psychiatry, which seeks to understand how humans form beliefs and make decisions and how these processes break down in psychiatric disorders such as addiction, depression, and autism. Continuously funded by NIH and private foundations, her work integrates computational modeling, cognitive neuroscience, neuroimaging, and human intracranial recording methods and frameworks. Dr. Gu has published in leading scientific journals such as Nature Mental Health, Nature Human Behavior, JAMA Psychiatry, PNAS, amongst many others. Dr. Gu is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Computational Psychiatry, a Reviewing Editor at eLife, and has served as a reviewer for numerous funding agencies including the NIMH, NIDA, NSF, the Wellcome Trust, Medical Research Council (UK), and DFG (Germany). Outside the lab, Dr. Gu is a dedicated advocate for mental health awareness, regularly speaking at public forums including a TEDx talk in 2018.

Dr. Higley studied behavioral neuroscience at Cornell University. He then completed his MD and PhD in the MSTP Program and the laboratory of Dr. Diego Contreras at the University of Pennsylvania. He continued his scientific training as a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Bernardo Sabatini at Harvard Medical School. In 2010, Dr. Higley joined the faculty of the Yale Department of Neuroscience and the Program in Cellular Neuroscience, Neurodegeneration, and Repair (CNNR). He was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2020. He has received numerous honors for his research, including a Sloan Research Fellowship, a Klingenstein Fellowship, and most recently the NIH Director's Pioneer Award. Dr. Higley has a secondary appointment in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and is a member of the Wu Tsai Institute. He also serves as an Associate Director for the Yale MD-PhD Program.

Humans, by nature, are irrepressibly social and neural mechanisms that underlie real-time social behaviors are not well-understood. The overarching goal of my research is to address this knowledge gap by discovering the fundamental neural mechanisms that underlie interactive social behaviors. We have developed multi-modal two-person neuroimaging technologies based on near infrared spectroscopy, fNIRS, configured for neural and behavioral measures of real-time live face-to-face and dialogue interactions between humans. Converging evidence from simultaneous measures of neural responses, facial classifications, eye-tracking, pupillometry, EEG, and behavioral reports of subjective effects builds a foundation for a new “neuroscience of two”. Emerging theoretical frameworks are founded on the interactive brain hypothesis purporting that neural systems during interaction engage processes not engaged during “solo” tasks, and recent findings of cross-brain neural synchrony suggest that brain-to-brain coupled mechanisms underlie social processing.

Jonathon (Joe) Howard is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry, a Professor of Physics, and a member of the Quantitative Biology Institute at Yale University. He is best known for his research on the mechanical properties of motor proteins and the cytoskeleton, and the development of techniques for observing, measuring and manipulating individual biological molecules. His group studies several cellular systems in which force and motion play key roles, including the motility of cilia, and the branching of developing neurons. Brought up in Australia, where he studied mathematics and neurobiology at the Australian National University, Professor Howard was a professor at the University of Washington Medical School in Seattle, a founding Director of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany, before moving to Yale 2013 where he enjoys new research projects and teaching.

Dr. Laura Huckins is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry. She received her masters in BioEngineering from Imperial College London in 2011, and her PhD in Molecular Biology and Psychiatric Genetics from the University of Cambridge in 2015. Her research focuses primarily on studying psychiatric disorders, with an emphasis on eating disorders and PTSD, as well as development and application of multi-omic methods to interpret the functional consequences of GWAS variants. Her lab focuses particularly on Eating Disorders and PTSD; to this end, she is co-chair of the PGC Eating Disorders working group.Dr. Huckins' work is funded by the Klarman Family Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.