About me
Currently, I am an Associate Professor (with tenure) of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College. I am a neuroscientist with training in computational and cognitive neuroscience and theoretical physics. I hold a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Physics from Sharif University of Technology. I obtained my Ph.D. in Physics with a focus in Computational Neuroscience from Brandeis University working with Xiao-Jing Wang. Following my Ph.D., I have done postdoctoral research with Christof Koch at Caltech, Read Montague at Baylor College of Medicine, and Tirin Moore at Stanford University.
About my research
My My research primarily explores adaptive decision-making and learning to reveal the neural underpinnings of biological intelligence across multiple scales—from synaptic and circuit levels to social interactions. Specifically, I focus on uncovering the neural mechanisms involved and examining how the computations necessary for these processes are executed by neuronal components in the brain.
To achieve this goal, I use detailed computational modeling at different levels (synaptic, cellular, and network), as well as psychophysics and behavioral methods in humans, to look for feasible mechanisms that account for both behavioral and neural data. The ultimate goal is to bridge the gap between cognitive and neuronal processes, and further explain behavioral laws in terms of biophysical parameters and constraints.
A central part of my research involves collaboration with experimentalists who study relevant questions across different species (rodents, non-human primates, and humans), and use a wide range of methods such as electrophysiology, MEG, fMRI, psychophysics, and behavioral economics.