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.

Arkarup Banerjee is a postdoctoral fellow in the Neuroscience Institute at the New York University Langone Medical Center. He received his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Delhi, his master’s degree at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai and his Ph.D. at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Tobias Bartsch is a postdoctoral researcher in Professor A. J. Hudspeth’s Laboratory of Sensory Neuroscience at the Rockefeller University. He attended college at the University of Würzburg in Germany and received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas at Austin.

Jarosław Błasiok is finishing his Ph.D. at the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. He received his B.S. and M.Sc. in Computer Science at the University of Warsaw.

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.

Michal Breker is a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Professor Fred Cross at the Rockefeller University. She received her master’s degree in immunology in 2008 and completed her Ph.D. in 2013 at the Department of Molecular Genetics, both at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.

Timothy Burbridge is a postdoctoral fellow in the Neuroscience Institute at NYU Langone Medical Center. He received his B.A. in biology from Williams College and his Ph.D. in neurobiology at Yale University.

Jennifer Bussell is a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Dr. Richard Axel in the Department of Neuroscience at Columbia University. She received her Ph.D. from the Rockefeller University and her A.B. from the University of Chicago.

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.

Shana Caro is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology at Columbia University, working with Dr. Dustin Rubenstein. She received her A.B. in human evolutionary biology from Harvard University and her D.Phil. in zoology from the University of Oxford, supervised by Professors Ashleigh Griffin and Stu West.

Sylvain Carpentier will be joining the Department of Mathematics at Columbia. He completed his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked with Victor Kac.

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.

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.

Jairo A. Diaz is a postdoctoral research associate at the Center for Soft Matter Research at New York University. There, he investigates the dynamics and self-assembly of soft matter at the mesoscopic scale with Professor David J. Pine. Diaz received his B.S. from the National University of Colombia, Bogota, and his Ph.D. from Purdue University.

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.

Sara Fenstermacher is a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Dr. Jeremy Dasen at New York University. She received her B.A. from Bucknell University and Ph.D. in neuroscience from Harvard University.

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.

Logan Grosenick is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Statistics at Columbia University. He received a Ph.D. in neurosciences from Stanford University, where he worked with Karl Deisseroth and Marc Levoy developing novel methods for volumetric functional neuroimaging of neural circuits in behaving animals.

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.

Arbel Harpak studies how genetic variation arises and how it is shaped by evolutionary processes such as natural selection. Harpak is a postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Molly Przeworski’s lab at Columbia University, working on statistical and population genetics. He also holds an M.S. in statistics and a Ph.D. in biology from Stanford University.

Benjamin Harrop-Griffiths is a postdoctoral researcher in mathematics at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley under the supervision of Daniel Tataru.

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.

Kohei Inayoshi received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics from Kyoto University, Japan. He obtained his Ph.D. in physics from Kyoto University in 2014 and currently works at Columbia University as a JSPS research fellow.

Ivan Kozyryev is a postdoctoral research scientist in the Department of Physics at Columbia University. He obtained his undergraduate degree in physics and applied mathematics at Yale University, and for his Ph.D. work at Harvard, he received the Deborah Jin Award for outstanding thesis research in AMO physics by the American Physical Society.

Wayne Mackey is a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Neural Science at New York University, where he also received his Ph.D. in cognition and perception. He received his B.A. in psychology from Temple University.

Rafael Maia is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology at Columbia University, working in the laboratory of Dr. Dustin Rubenstein. Dr. Maia received his master’s in ecology from the Universidade de Brasília (Brazil) in 2008 and his Ph.D. in integrated bioscience from the University of Akron in 2014.

Bianca Jones Marlin is a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Dr. Richard Axel in the Department of Neuroscience at Columbia University. She holds a Ph.D. in neuroscience from New York University School of Medicine and dual bachelor’s degrees in biology and adolescent education from Saint John’s 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.

Takashi Onikubo is a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Dr. Robert Roeder at the Rockefeller University. He received his Ph.D. from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where he joined the laboratory of Dr. David Shechter to study how post-translational modifications alter the function of a histone chaperone during Xenopus laevis development.

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.

Maria Pokrovskii is a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Frederic Geissmann in the Immunology Program at the Sloan Kettering Institute. She received her Ph.D. from New York University and her B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Carlotta Ronda is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Systems Biology at Columbia University in Harris Wang’s lab.

Mijo Simunovic obtained his first Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in the field of theoretical chemistry. Working with Gregory Voth, he applied theoretical modeling and mesoscale-level simulations to study how proteins organize on lipid membranes to change their shape.

Eliran Subag is an incoming postdoctoral researcher at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University. He completed his Ph.D. in mathematics at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel under the supervision of Ofer Zeitouni, with the support of the Adams Fellowship.

Xin Sun will join he Department of Mathematics at Columbia University as a postdoctoral researcher. He received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) under the direction of Professor Scott Sheffield.

Yi Sun will be joining the Department of Mathematics at Columbia University as a postdoctoral research scientist. He completed his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the supervision of Pavel Etingof.

Kaia Tombak is starting a postdoctoral fellowship in Professor Jessica Rothman’s nutritional ecology laboratory at Hunter College, CUNY. She is presently completing her Ph.D. at the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University.

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.

Li-Cheng Tsai is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Mathematics at Columbia University, working with Professor Ivan Corwin. Tsai received his B.S. degree in Physics from National Taiwan University, and later received his Ph.D. degree in Mathematics from Stanford University, with Professor Amir Dembo being his thesis advisor.

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.

Michael Waskom is a postdoctoral researcher in the Center for Neural Science at New York University. He received his Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University, where he was a trainee in the Center for Mind, Brain and Computation.

Zheng (Herbert) Wu is a joint postdoctoral fellow in the laboratories of Drs. Richard Axel and Michael Shadlen in the Department of Neuroscience at Columbia University. He received his Ph.D. in neurobiology from Harvard University and his B.S. from Fudan University in China.

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.