Simons Society of Fellows: People

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.

Begüm Aydin is a postdoctoral researcher in the Laboratory of Mucosal Immunology at the Rockefeller University, working with Dr. Daniel Mucida. She received her Ph.D. from New York University and her B.S. from Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey. In her doctoral studies under the supervision of Dr. Esteban Mazzoni, Aydin studied how proneural transcription factors specify neuronal fate.

Jarosław Błasiok is starting a postdoctoral fellowship in the Theory of Computation group at Columbia University. He is presently finishing his Ph.D. at the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University

Abigail Bodner will be joining the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University as a postdoctoral fellow in Professor Laure Zannaʼs research group. Bodnerʼs research interests span a broad range of topics involving climate dynamics, geophysical fluid dynamics and turbulence.

Kathryn Bonnen is a postdoctoral research fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Eero Simoncelli at the Center for Neural Science at New York University. She earned her bachelor’s degrees in computer science and psychology at Michigan State University and received a Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of Texas at Austin.

Philipp Brand is a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Dr. Vanessa Ruta at the Rockefeller University. He holds a B.S. in biology and an M.S. in genetics and evolution from the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, and a Ph.D. in population biology from the University of California, Davis.

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.

Ashley Chui is a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Michele Pagano at the New York University School of Medicine. Chui’s current postdoctoral research focuses on a family of ubiquitin ligases, the cullin-RING ligases and how these ligases and, importantly, its substrates regulate cellular functions such as the cell cycle through timed proteasomal degradation.

Raphael (Raffi) Cohn is a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University. He earned his bachelor’s degrees in cognitive science and computer science from the University of Pennsylvania, his master’s degree in the mathematical foundations of computer science from Oxford University and his Ph.D. at the Rockefeller University.

Benem Davids will be joining the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Columbia University as a postdoctoral research scientist in Dr. Stephen Goff's laboratory. Davids plans to investigate ancient viral relics that have become a stable part of our genome, which play a critical role during brain development, learning and memory, and the regulation of neuronal gene expression.

Aravind Devarakonda will be a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Professor Cory Dean at Columbia University. Devarakonda’s research lies at the intersection of fundamental condensed matter physics and solid state chemistry and has focused on synthesizing and probing new quantum materials as a pathway to realizing new states of matter.

Aleksander Doan is a postdoctoral research scientist at the Department of Mathematics at Columbia University and a junior research fellow of Trinity College, University of Cambridge. He completed his Ph.D. in mathematics at Stony Brook University, working under the supervision of Simon Donaldson.

Dr. Robert W. Fernandez is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Oliver Hobert at Columbia University. His current work focuses on how transcriptional programs regulate the development of neural circuits in C. elegans.

Michele Fornea will be joining the Department of Mathematics at Columbia University as a postdoctoral fellow after a year at Princeton with Professor Christopher Skinner. Fornea completed his Ph.D. at McGill University under the guidance of professors Henri Darmon and Adrian Iovita.

Emanuele Galiffi is a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Professor Andrea Alù at the Advanced Science Research Center, City University of New York, where he studies fundamental aspects of wave propagation in nanostructured materials, also known as metamaterials.

Carla Golden is a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Christine Constantinople at New York University. Her current postdoctoral research focuses on the regulation of value-based decision-making by estradiol, a gonadal hormone. Through this work, she hopes to elucidate the process by which natural fluctuations in estradiol mediate reward learning through the modulation of dopamine in the brain.

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.

Leah Houri-Zeevi is a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Leslie Vosshall at the Rockefeller University. She received her Ph.D. and M.S. from the department of neurobiology at Tel Aviv University, under the supervision of Dr. Oded Rechavi. Her graduate work focused on understanding the rules of transgenerational inheritance of non-DNA-based information.

Jiaoyang Huang is an incoming postdoctoral researcher in the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University. He completed his Ph.D. in mathematics at Harvard university under the supervision of Horng-Tzer Yau. Prior to that, he received his B.S. in mathematics from MIT.

Patrick Kennedy is a postdoctoral researcher studying the evolution of animal social behavior. Starting in January 2021, he will be based at Columbia University, working with Dr. Dustin Rubenstein. He will be focusing on ecological and climatic drivers of social insect cooperation, supported by the Simons Junior Fellowship and a Marie Curie Global Fellowship, using theoretical models and field experiments with African wasps.

Timothy Large is going to be a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Mathematics at Columbia University, mentored by Professor Mohammed Abouzaid. Large’s work combines ideas from homotopy theory and Floer homology to study problems in symplectic geometry and low-dimensional topology.

Emily Mackevicius is currently a postdoctoral neuroscientist at Columbia University in the lab of Professor Dmitriy Aronov. She received her B.S. in mathematics at the University of Chicago, and her Ph.D. in neuroscience at MIT, in the lab of Professor Michale Fee. Her research investigates what learning mechanisms in the brain give us the power to form and use memories.

Jennifer Merritt studies how differentiation in the genetic architecture of neurobiological systems contributes to the evolution of behavior. Merritt is a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Dr. Andrés Bendesky in the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University.

Amy Norovich is a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Dr. Andrés Bendesky in the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University. She received her B.S. in biology from MIT and her Ph.D. in biology from Columbia University.

Fedor Popov is an incoming postdoctoral researcher at New York University, where he will be working with Professor Sergei Dubovsky. His research interests encompass a variety of cutting-edge problems in theoretical physics. During his Ph.D., he has mostly been studying properties of large-N models and tensor models.

Joan Pulupa is a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Stavros Lomvardas in the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University. Pulupa is interested in developing and using live-cell imaging technologies to study how changes in genome organization and storage affect cell differentiation and gene expression.

Kaia Tombak is a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Jessica Rothman’s nutritional ecology laboratory at Hunter College, CUNY. Tombak is interested in the ecological factors that drive individuals to group and societies to take different shapes, such as egalitarian or hierarchical structures, stable or fission-fusion groups, and mate-guarding vs. territorial mating strategies.

Pooja Viswanathan is a postdoctoral researcher in the Laboratory of Neural Systems at the Rockefeller University. She moved here from Germany, where she received her Ph.D. and M.S. in neuroscience at the University of Tübingen and the International Max Planck Research School.

Sebastian Wolff will be joining the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University as a postdoctoral associate. Wolff is interested in the analysis and verification of concurrent computer systems. He has contributed the first automated verification approach for lock-free data structures that manually manage their memory.

Songtian Sonia Zhang will be joining the Department of Physics at Columbia University as a postdoctoral research fellow in Professor Dmitri Basov’s group. Zhang obtained her bachelor’s in physics at the University of Waterloo and her Ph.D. from the Princeton University physics department under Professor Zahid Hasan. Zhang was also awarded the Kusaka Memorial Prize by this department for outstanding performance in research and professional promise.