CCN’s SueYeon Chung Named a ‘Rising Star in Neuroscience’
The Transmitter — an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation — has selected Flatiron Institute neuroscientist SueYeon Chung as one of its 2025 Rising Stars in Neuroscience. The awards recognize early-career researchers who have made outstanding scientific contributions to the field and have demonstrated a commitment to mentoring and community building in neuroscience.
Chung is an associate research scientist and project leader at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Neuroscience and an assistant professor of physics and applied mathematics at Harvard University. Her work leverages physics, geometry and machine learning to model perception and cognition in the brain. Her manifold capacity theory, first outlined in a 2018 Physical Review X paper, helps explain how the brain efficiently classifies objects among the vast number of possible perceptual parameters. She was awarded a Klingenstein Fellowship Award in Neuroscience in 2023 and a research fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in 2024.
As a mentor, Chung creates “an inclusive environment emphasizing intellectual innovation and rigorous interdisciplinary training,” says Ventakesh N. Murthy, a professor at Harvard University. Chung has helped organize the Computational and Systems Neuroscience conference since 2022 and has been involved with multiple other workshops and summer schools.
Before joining the Flatiron Institute, Chung was a postdoctoral research scientist at Columbia University’s Center for Theoretical Neuroscience. Before that, she was a fellow in computation in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She earned her Ph.D. in applied physics from Harvard University.
