Brent Doiron received a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Ottawa in 2004. From 2004 to 2007, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at New York University at the Center for Neural Science. In 2007, he moved to an assistant professorship in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Pittsburgh and was promoted to associate professor in 2013. In 2012 he became co-director of the Program in Neural Computation at the Center for Neural Basis of Cognition in Pittsburgh. Doiron’s work focuses on a combination of nonlinear dynamics and statistical mechanics with an emphasis on the genesis and transfer of variability in neural circuits. He has developed core theoretical insights that have made contributions to a variety of sensory systems. Throughout his research career, he has worked closely with experimental colleagues who work in the electrosensory, olfactory, somatosensory, auditory and visual systems.
In 2006, Doiron received the National Science and Engineering and Research Council of Canada’s top doctoral thesis award, which recognizes Canada’s top-achieving graduate scholars. He also received the Governor General’s gold medal for academic excellence for his graduate scholarship. He was awarded a Human Frontier Long-Term Fellowship for his work at New York University. In 2009, he received an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in Neuroscience, and in 2012 he was awarded the Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Award for outstanding research at the University of Pittsburgh.
Current Project: Communication between neural populations: circuits, coding and behavior
Past Project: Attentional modulation of neuronal variability constrains circuit models