Simons Society of Fellows: People

Daniel G. Alabi is an incoming assistant professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Before beginning his faculty appointment in 2025, he will remain a postdoctoral research scientist in the Data Science Institute at Columbia University.

Eddy Albarran is a postdoctoral research scientist in the laboratory of Dr. Rui Costa in the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University. For his postdoctoral work with Drs. Rui Costa and Darcy Peterka, Albarran is using a brain-machine interface paradigm to probe how dopamine orchestrates the sculpting of neural circuits during reinforcement learning.

Morris Ang will be a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Mathematics at Columbia University, working with Professor Julien Dubedat. He is completing his Ph.D. at Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the guidance of Professor Scott Sheffield. Previously, he completed a B.S. in mathematics and a M.S. in statistics at Stanford University.

Eric Arsenault is a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University in the group of Professor Xiaoyang Zhu. He received his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, under the mentorship of Professor Graham Fleming. Prior to that, Arsenault earned his B.A. in chemistry and in physics from Wesleyan University.

Andrew Bahle is a postdoctoral fellow at the NYU Langone Neuroscience Institute in the lab of Dr. Michael Long. During his Ph.D. research, Bahle contributed to the development of new unsupervised learning techniques for neural data analysis and studied the neural mechanisms involved in the formation of auditory memories critical for song imitation in zebra finches.

Beatrice Barra is a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Professor Dmitry Rinberg at the New York University Neuroscience Institute. She received her M.Sc. in biomedical engineering from Politecnico di Milano (Italy) and her Ph.D. in medical sciences from the University of Fribourg (Switzerland).

James Bartusek will be joining New York University as a postdoctoral fellow in the fall of 2024, hosted by Nir Bitansky. He is currently completing his Ph.D. in computer science at the University of California, Berkeley under the supervision of Sanjam Garg. His research interests are in the foundations of cryptography and quantum information. In particular, he studies how quantum technology can be utilized to improve information security and privacy, and he designs cryptographic protocols for safeguarding information and computation in the era of quantum computers.

Angus "Gus" Beane is an incoming postdoctoral fellow at New York University in the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics with Professor David Hogg. Beane is primarily interested in using the present-day properties of stars to understand the origins of the Milky Way.

Sydney Blattman is a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Dana Pe'er at Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) Cancer Center. During her Ph.D., Blattman studied phenotypic heterogeneity in bacterial populations. She developed PETRI-seq, the first high-throughput single-cell sequencing technology for microbes.

Adam C. Burnett is a postdoctoral fellow working with Dr. Ed Gerber in the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University. Burnett is a climate scientist interested in large-scale atmospheric dynamics, tropical meteorology, and climate model improvement.

Juan Esteban Rodríguez Camargo’s main area of research is arithmetic geometry, focused on the cohomology of Shimura varieties. He uses tools from condensed mathematics, representation theory and p-adic Hodge theory to understand the deeply involved relation between automorphic forms and Galois representations. In his future work, he will continue the development of the theory of solid locally analytic representations and find more applications to the p-adic local Langlands program.

Michael Chapman is going to be a postdoctoral researcher for the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University under the mentorship of Professors Subhash Khot and Oded Regev. He is currently completing his Ph.D. in pure mathematics at the Hebrew University under the supervision of Professors Alex Lubotzky and Nati Linial.

Sanchit Chaturvedi is a postdoctoral fellow at the Courant Institute at New York University and works with Vlad Vicol and Scott Armstrong. He completed his Ph.D. at Stanford University with Jonathan Luk and previously was an undergraduate student at New York University. He grew up in Agra, India, and completed high school in Agra.

Hector Afonso Cruz will join the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics at New York University as a postdoctoral fellow with Professors Yacine Ali-Haïmoud and Anthony Pullen. Cruz is a theoretical astrophysicist studying the earliest galaxies and their cosmological initial conditions.

Charlie Dowell is a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Dr. Vanessa Ruta at Rockefeller University. Dowell is interested in the circuit mechanisms controlling innate behaviors and their underlying computations. His current research investigates how fruit flies use their sense of smell to navigate large distances to find food.

Asma Farhat will join the laboratory of Dr. Shruti Naik at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the Allen Discovery Center for Neuroimmune Interactions as a postdoctoral fellow. Farhat’s overarching research interest is to understand how inflammatory events and the crosstalk between immune cells and tissues shape tissue resilience or dysfunction.

Gily Ginosar is a postdoctoral fellow at New York University, in the groups of professors Dan Sanes, David Schneider and Alex Williams. She received her Ph.D. and M.Sc. in brain science from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, under the mentorship of Professor Nachum Ulanovsky. Before that, Ginosar earned her B.Sc. in physics and cognitive sciences from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Kevin Hu is a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University mentored by Dan Lacker. His research interests lie broadly at the intersection of probability theory and mathematical physics.

Sophie Huiberts will be a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University in the Department of Computer Science. She is completing her Ph.D. at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica. She holds an M.S. degree in mathematics and B.S. degrees in computer science and mathematics from Utrecht University. Huiberts' work is focused on geometric aspects of combinatorial optimization.

Samra Husremović is a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Professor Xavier Roy at Columbia University. Husremović holds a B.S. degree from Bates College and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley under the mentorship of professor Kwabena Bediako.

Tomas Kay is a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Dr. Daniel Kronauer at the Rockefeller University. His research uses ants to understand the evolution of social behavior and how social interactions shape behavior from molecular and evolutionary perspectives.

Ella King is a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Soft Matter Research at New York University, working with David Grier. She received her Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University with Michael Brenner.

Megan Kirchgessner is a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. Robert Froemke at the New York University School of Medicine. She received her Ph.D. in neurosciences from the University of California, San Diego, and her B.A. in cognitive sciences and psychology from Rice University. She is interested in how neural circuits for sensory processing are constructed and modified by experience and used for social behaviors.

Zhanat Koshenov is a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Dr. Timothy Ryan at Weill Cornell Medicine. He received his B.S. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and his Ph.D. from Medical University of Graz, Austria. During his doctoral studies in the laboratory of Dr. Wolfgang Graier, Zhanat investigated cellular energy metabolism and its molecular fine tuning in cancer and pancreatic beta cells. His work demonstrated differential calcium ion regulation of mitochondrial energy production in health and disease. His work in pancreatic beta cells provides potential link between neurodegenerative diseases and diabetes. Zhanat was awarded Austrian Award of Excellence for his doctoral dissertation.

Žiga Krajnik is a postdoctoral fellow with Professor Aditi Mitra in the physics department at New York University. He received his B.S., M.Sc., and Ph.D. from the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia while under the supervision of Professor Tomaž Prosen. During his doctoral studies, he was awarded the Milan Lenarčič Foundation scholarship.

Christopher Lafferty is a postdoctoral researcher with György Buzsáki at the New York University Neuroscience Institute. He received his Ph.D. from McGill University under the supervision of Jonathan Britt.

Lachlan Lancaster will be joining the Department of Astronomy at Columbia University where he will be working with Professor Greg Bryan on understanding the formation and evolution of star clusters. Lachlan is currently finishing his Ph.D. at Princeton University where he has worked on a number of topics in theoretical astrophysics, including cosmology, exotic dark matter models and galactic dynamics.

Elise LePage will be joining the Department of Mathematics at Columbia University as a postdoctoral research scientist under the mentorship of Professor Andrei Okounkov. LePage’s research lies at the intersection between string theory, low-dimensional topology, and categorical representation theory.

Alexis Stutzman Lewis is a postdoctoral research scientist in the laboratory of Dr. Bianca Jones Marlin at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute. As a graduate student in the laboratories of Drs. Jill Dowen and Daniel McKay, she identified epigenetic determinants of genome organization.

Isabel Low is a postdoctoral neuroscientist in Dr. Dmitriy Aronov's lab at Columbia University. She received her Ph.D. in neurosciences from Stanford University and her B.A. in neuroscience and creative writing from Bowdoin College. Isabel is investigating how different parts of the brain communicate to transform memories into actions.

Noam Mazor is a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell Tech and Tel Aviv University, hosted by Rafael Pass and Joe Halpern. Mazor’s research focuses on complexity-based cryptography and its connections to meta-complexity. He is also interested in broader aspects of complexity theory.

Francesca Mignacco is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for the Physics of Biological Function, a joint effort between the Graduate Center at City University of New York and Princeton University. Her research interests are at the crossroads of statistical physics, machine learning and computational neuroscience. Her graduate research focused on the search for theoretical foundations of machine learning using methods and knowledge from statistical physics.

Luke Olsen is a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Dr. Paul Cohen at the Rockefeller University. He holds a B.S. in health promotion from Emporia State University, an M.S. in exercise physiology from the University of Kansas, and a Ph.D. in cell biology and physiology from the University of Kansas Medical Center.

Maëla Paul is a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University's Zuckerman Institute, where she works at the intersection of molecular neuroscience and developmental neurobiology. Currently, she is investigating how single neurons establish complex connection patterns with multiple targets across different brain regions.

Oliver Philcox will be joining the High Energy Theory Group at Columbia University as a postdoctoral fellow with Professors Lam Hui and Colin Hill. He is currently completing his Ph.D. in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University, under the supervision of Professors David Spergel and Matias Zaldarriaga, and is a visiting student at the Institute for Advanced Study.

Benjamin Pineau is a postdoctoral fellow at the Courant Institute at New York University and works under the mentorship of Professor Vlad Vicol. Pineau is completed his Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley under the supervision of Professor Daniel Tataru. Previously, he completed his BSc. in mechanical engineering at the University of Alberta.

Wenzer Qin is a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics at New York University working alongside Professor Ken Van Tilburg. Qin is broadly interested in theoretical cosmology and dark matter phenomenology.

Hamed Rahimi Nasrabadi is a postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Winrich Freiwald laboratory at Rockefeller University. He completed his Ph.D. in vision science at SUNY College of Optometry under the mentorship of Dr. Jose-Manuel Alonso. For his dissertation work, he received the SUNY Chancellor’s Distinguished Award.

Leslie Sibener is a postdoctoral fellow in Priya Rajasethupathy’s lab at Rockefeller University. She earned her Ph.D. in neurobiology and behavior at Columbia University with Dr. Rui Costa, and her B.S. in neuroscience and B.A. in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University. Leslie is interested in studying why specific memories are selected for long term storage, while others are forgotten.

Magdalena Siwek is a postdoctoral fellow in astrophysics at New York University. She completed her B.Sc. and M.Sci. in astronomy and physics at the University of Glasgow in 2017, and her Ph.D. in astronomy at Harvard University in 2024.

Cynthia Steinhardt is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Center for Theoretical Neuroscience at Columbia University. She graduated with an A.B. in neuroscience from Princeton University and received her Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She will be working with Professor Larry Abbott on creating network models of how electric fields drive neural populations. Her focus will be on understanding how the auditory stream responds and adapts to cochlear implant stimulation, to restore complex abilities, such as speech perception to patients.

Hamish Swanson is a postdoctoral researcher at the City University of New York Advanced Science Researcher Center in the group of Professor Rein Ulijn. Swanson’s current work seeks to elucidate how the molecular architecture of peptide amino acid sequences influences their intermolecular interactions and how these interactions, in turn, affect material properties such as solubility and the tendency to self-assemble.

Andre B. Toussaint is a postdoctoral research scientist in the laboratory of Dr. Ishmail Abdus-Saboor in the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University. Prior to arriving at Columbia, Andre earned his Ph.D. in psychology and neuroscience at Temple University under the mentorship of Dr. Mathieu Wimmer.

Thomas Werkmeister will be a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University working with Professors Aravind Devarakonda and Cory Dean. Werkmeister’s research focuses on creating high-quality electronic devices to enhance our understanding of fundamental physics and ultimately develop new technologies utilizing quantum coherence.

Max Xu is joining the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University as a postdoctoral researcher. Xu completed his Ph.D. at Stanford University under the supervision of professor Kannan Soundararajan and professor Jacob Fox. Prior to Stanford, Xu received a M.A. in mathematics from the University of Cambridge, where he was based at Trinity College and mentored by professor Peter Varju. Before Cambridge, Xu obtained a B.S. in mathematics from University College London where his mentor was professor Andrew Granville.

Dr. Lynn Yap is a postdoctoral research fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Richard Axel in the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University. She completed her Ph.D. in the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, where she worked with Dr. Michael E. Greenberg. Prior to Harvard, she received her B.S. in chemistry and biology from Yale University.

Anastasia-Maria Zavitsanou is a postdoctoral research scientist in the laboratory of Dr. Ishmail Abdus-Saboor in the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University. She holds a B.Sc. in biochemistry from Imperial College in London and a Ph.D. in immunology from NYU School of Medicine.

Jessica Zung is a postdoctoral research scientist at the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University. Zung is broadly interested in understanding how neural circuits evolve to drive complex behaviors. Her doctoral research focused on the evolution of mosquito host preference and the chemistry of human and animal odor.