Simons Society of Fellows: People

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.

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.

Angus "Gus" Beane is a postdoctoral fellow at New York University in the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics with Professor David Hogg. Beane completed his B.A. and M.S. in Physics & Astronomy and the University of Pennsylvania in 2019 and completed his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 2025 with Professor Lars Hernquist.

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.

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 has joined the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics at New York University as a postdoctoral fellow with Professors Yacine Ali-Haïmoud and Anthony Pullen. Hector completed his Ph.D. in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University under Professor Marc Kamionkowski, where he was an NSF Graduate Research Fellow. Previously, he received his bachelor’s degree in Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University.

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 has joined 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 holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Biomedical Science from the University of Sheffield and completed her Ph.D. in 2025 at the Medical University of Vienna and the Research Center for Molecular Medicine in the group of Professor Sylvia Knapp.

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.

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.

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.

Elise LePage has joined the Department of Mathematics at Columbia University as a postdoctoral research scientist under the mentorship of Professor Andrei Okounkov. She completed her Ph.D. in physics at the University of California, Berkeley under the supervision of Professor Mina Aganagic. She holds her M.Sc. in theoretical physics from the Perimeter Institute at the University of Waterloo and her B.A. in physics and mathematics from Hamilton College.

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.

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.

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.

Thomas Werkmeister is a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University working with Professors Aravind Devarakonda and Cory Dean. He received his Ph.D. in applied physics from Harvard University, under the mentorship of Professor Philip Kim. Previously, he obtained his B.S. from the University of Pittsburgh.

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.

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.