Alec Sheffield

Alec Sheffield is a 3rd year graduate student in the labs of Monika Jadi and Anirvan Nandy. During his undergraduate, Alec worked in the labs of Emiliano Santarnecchi at Harvard Medical School and Flavio Frohlich at UNC Chapel Hill studying the effects of non-invasive brain stimulation in humans. Prior to starting graduate school, Alec worked as a research assistant in Gloria Choi's lab at MIT, studying mechanisms of innate social behaviors in rodents.

Currently, Alec is investigating predictive coding in the ventral stream of marmosets. Predictive coding is an algorithm which holds promise as a universal theory of cortical function, explaining the brain's tremendous capacity for learning and model building. Alec is also developing machine-learning methods for inferring causal structure from data using Dynamic Bayesian Networks. Ultimately, Alec is interested in using principles of computational neuroscience to develop better artificial intelligence algorithms and build biologically-inspired brain computer interfaces.