Sama Ahmed, Ph.D.

Sama Ahmed is a Weill Neurohub term assistant professor in the Program in Neuroscience and Department of Psychology at the University of Washington. His research focuses on understanding the molecular and neural control of complex social behaviors.

Ahmed earned a bachelor’s degree in bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania and a doctorate in neuroscience from the University of California, San Francisco. He completed his postdoctoral training at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, where he studied brain-wide dynamics during natural behavior. His training spans genetics, evolutionary biology and systems neuroscience, and he has received recognition for mentoring and early-career research.

Ahmed’s current work examines how distributed neural activity supports behavioral multitasking and social interaction, integrating computational modeling with whole-brain imaging and connectomics. This research aims to clarify how context and internal state shape sensory processing and naturalistic behavior.