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Research Staff

Alex Williams, Ph.D.

Associate Research Scientist, Center for Computational Neuroscience

Affiliations
  • Assistant Professor, Center for Neural Science, New York University
Website
neurostatslab.org

Bio

Alex is jointly appointed as an Assistant Professor in the Center for Neural Science at NYU and an Associate Research Scientist / Project Leader at the Flatiron Institute. Alex develops statistical models to characterize functional flexibility in large-scale neural circuits—e.g., how the dynamics of large neural ensembles change when learning a new skill, during periods of high attention or task engagement, or over the course of development and aging.

Alex performed his postdoctoral work in the Statistics Department at Stanford University working with Scott Linderman’s research group. Before that, he obtained a PhD in Neuroscience from Stanford with supervision from Surya Ganguli. He has also worked at Google Brain (with David Sussillo), Sandia National Labs (with Tamara Kolda), the Salk Institute (with Terry Sejnowski), and Brandeis University (with Eve Marder) as a visiting researcher / technician. He first began studying neuroscience as an undergraduate at Bowdoin College, where he was advised by Patsy Dickinson.

 

Publications

Privileged representational axes in biological and artificial neural networks

Nature Human Behaviour, October 23, 2026

Meenakshi Khosla, Sudhanshu Srivastava, A. Williams, Josh McDermott, and N. Kanwisher

Similarity of Neural Network Representations in Superposition

arXiv:2604.00208, June 22, 2026

Sunny Liu, Habon Issa, André Longon, Liv Gorton, Meenakshi Khosla, A. Williams, et al.

How Data Augmentation Shapes Neural Representations

arXiv:2605.15306, May 14, 2026

Tianxiao He, A. Williams, and S. Harvey

Tracking the Fidelity of Internal Neural Representations with Error-In-Variables Regression

bioRxiv:2026.04.22.720005, May 12, 2026

Isabel Garon, Stephen Keeley, and A. Williams

Featuring Alex Williams

Alex Williams headshot.

CCN Research Scientist Alex Williams Named McKnight Scholar

A portrait photo of Alex Williams.

From Statistics to Gerbils: Learning About Neural Connections With Social Rodents

Side-by-side portraits of SueYeon Chung and Alex Williams.

SueYeon Chung and Alex Williams Join CCN as Project Leaders

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Center for Computational Neuroscience

Understanding the human brain is one of the greatest and most challenging scientific frontiers of our time. CCN’s mission is to develop models, principles and conceptual frameworks that deepen our knowledge of brain function — both in health and in disease.

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