Simons Society of Fellows: People

Abigail Bodner will be joining the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University as a postdoctoral fellow in Professor Laure Zannaʼs research group. Bodnerʼs research interests span a broad range of topics involving climate dynamics, geophysical fluid dynamics and turbulence.

Ashley Chui is a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Michele Pagano at the New York University School of Medicine. Chui’s current postdoctoral research focuses on a family of ubiquitin ligases, the cullin-RING ligases and how these ligases and, importantly, its substrates regulate cellular functions such as the cell cycle through timed proteasomal degradation.

Benem Davids will be joining the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Columbia University as a postdoctoral research scientist in Dr. Stephen Goff's laboratory. Davids plans to investigate ancient viral relics that have become a stable part of our genome, which play a critical role during brain development, learning and memory, and the regulation of neuronal gene expression.

Aravind Devarakonda will be a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Professor Cory Dean at Columbia University. Devarakonda’s research lies at the intersection of fundamental condensed matter physics and solid state chemistry and has focused on synthesizing and probing new quantum materials as a pathway to realizing new states of matter.

= Robert W. Fernandez is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Oliver Hobert at Columbia University. His current work focuses on how transcriptional programs regulate the development of neural circuits in C. elegans.

Emanuele Galiffi is a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Professor Andrea Alù at the Advanced Science Research Center, City University of New York, where he studies fundamental aspects of wave propagation in nanostructured materials, also known as metamaterials.

Carla Golden is a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Christine Constantinople at New York University. Her current postdoctoral research focuses on the regulation of value-based decision-making by estradiol, a gonadal hormone. Through this work, she hopes to elucidate the process by which natural fluctuations in estradiol mediate reward learning through the modulation of dopamine in the brain.

Timothy Large is going to be a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Mathematics at Columbia University, mentored by Professor Mohammed Abouzaid. Large’s work combines ideas from homotopy theory and Floer homology to study problems in symplectic geometry and low-dimensional topology.

Jennifer Merritt studies how differentiation in the genetic architecture of neurobiological systems contributes to the evolution of behavior. Merritt is a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Dr. Andrés Bendesky in the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University.

Fedor Popov is an incoming postdoctoral researcher at New York University, where he will be working with Professor Sergei Dubovsky. His research interests encompass a variety of cutting-edge problems in theoretical physics. During his Ph.D., he has mostly been studying properties of large-N models and tensor models.

Joan Pulupa is a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Stavros Lomvardas in the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University. Pulupa is interested in developing and using live-cell imaging technologies to study how changes in genome organization and storage affect cell differentiation and gene expression.

Sebastian Wolff will be joining the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University as a postdoctoral associate. Wolff is interested in the analysis and verification of concurrent computer systems. He has contributed the first automated verification approach for lock-free data structures that manually manage their memory.