Simons Society of Fellows

Naama Aviram is a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Professor Luciano Marraffini at Rockefeller University. She received both her M.S. and her Ph.D. from the Department of Molecular Genetics of the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel.

Mariana Cardoso is a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Dr. Lynne Kiorpes at the Center for Neural Science at New York University. She received her master’s in physics engineering from the Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, and her Ph.D. in neuroscience from Universidade Nova de Lisboa in context of the Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme.

Rosemary Cater is a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Associate Professor Filippo Mancia at Columbia University Medical Center. She received her Bachelor of Advanced Science in biochemistry and pharmacology with first-class honors, and her Ph.D. in pharmacology from the University of Sydney, Australia.

Dorri Halbertal will work as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Professor Dmitri Basov at Columbia University, where he will employ optical methods to investigate new physics of quantum materials. Halbertal started as a theoretical astrophysicist and developed advanced numerical models to study supernovae and then changed fields, receiving his Ph.D. in 2017 in the Department of Condensed Matter Physics at the Weizmann Institute of Science under the supervision of Professor Eli Zeldov.

Krista Perks is currently a postdoctoral neuroscientist at Columbia University with Dr. Nathaniel Sawtell. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego, with Dr. Timothy Gentner, where she studied how individual neurons encode flexible representations of vocal communication signals in the auditory system of a songbird.

Lisa Tran is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Columbia University. She received her B.A. from New York University, with a double major in physics and philosophy, where she worked with David Pine. She then obtained her Ph.D. in physics from University of Pennsylvania, where she worked with Randall Kamien and Kathleen Stebe.

Robert (Guangyu) Yang is a postdoctoral research scientist in the Center for Theoretical Neuroscience at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute. He received his B.S. in physics from Peking University and his Ph.D. in neuroscience from New York University working with computational neuroscientist Dr. Xiao-Jing Wang.