Seven Neuroscientists Awarded Transition to Independence Fellowships by the Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain

The Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain (SCGB) has announced its first class of Transition to Independence fellows. The program facilitates the transition to research independence of outstanding systems and computational neuroscientists from historically underrepresented backgrounds.

The fellowship provides each of the seven fellows $495,000 over three years to help them become independent investigators and establish grant funding at the start of their tenure-track professorships.

The newest fellows are Fanny Cazettes, Austin Coley, Laura Driscoll, Lea Duncker, Danique Jeurissen, Laureline Logiaco and Chen Ran.

Cazettes is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Champalimaud Foundation in Lisbon, Portugal. Her research focuses on the neural systems and computations underlying a repertoire of foraging decisions in mice.

Coley is a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. He studies the effect of neural circuits on behavior and state-dependent and region-specific cellular aberrations implicated in neuropsychiatric conditions.

Driscoll is a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. Her research investigates how neural networks contextually reconfigure for different computations and throughout learning.

Duncker is also a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. Her work explores how the recurrent neural circuits that create behavior can learn, store, choose between and express multiple patterns of action without interference.

Jeurissen is a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University. Her research aims to understand how the flow of information between specialized brain areas changes to allow for the flexible behavior that is a hallmark of primate cognition.

Logiaco is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Theoretical Neuroscience at Columbia University. Her research uses a combination of theory, modeling and model-guided data analysis to study the neural network mechanisms supporting the flexible generation of hierarchical behaviors.

Ran is a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School. His research will further investigate how visceral organs are represented throughout the brain, and how viscerosensory codes regulate physiology and behavior.

The seven researchers are the first class of SCGB Transition to Independence fellows. The program grew out of the collaboration’s previous Bridge to Independence fellowship program, which launched last year.

The Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) and the Simons Collaboration on Plasticity and the Aging Brain (SCPAB) provide similar independence awards. You can read more about the latest class of SCPAB fellows here; SFARI will announce its new fellows later this summer.