Hamed Rahimi Nasrabadi, Ph.D.

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.

Hamed’s graduate work involved investigating how luminance or light energy is encoded in early processing stages of the visual brain. As visual information travels to more advanced brain areas, it becomes enriched in representing obscure visual patterns, integrates with other sensory modalities, and participates in orchestrating motor output. This visuomotor transformation lays a foundation for carrying out social behavior that is essential for the survival in social niches. In his postdoctoral research, Hamed is interested in understanding the neural mechanisms behind visuomotor transformation that serve to underpin the social machinery of the brain. By deploying novel experimental paradigms and computational methods, he aims to investigate how social cues are processed in the brain regions that are considered precursors to human brain language areas.