Simons Society of Fellows: People

Daniel G. Alabi is an incoming assistant professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Before beginning his faculty appointment in 2025, he will remain a postdoctoral research scientist in the Data Science Institute at Columbia University.

Eddy Albarran is a postdoctoral research scientist in the laboratory of Dr. Rui Costa in the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University. For his postdoctoral work with Drs. Rui Costa and Darcy Peterka, Albarran is using a brain-machine interface paradigm to probe how dopamine orchestrates the sculpting of neural circuits during reinforcement learning.

Morris Ang will be a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Mathematics at Columbia University, working with Professor Julien Dubedat. He is completing his Ph.D. at Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the guidance of Professor Scott Sheffield. Previously, he completed a B.S. in mathematics and a M.S. in statistics at Stanford University.

Paige Arnold is a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Dr. Luciano Marraffini at Rockefeller University. Paige is broadly interested in how metabolic rewiring potentiates changes in cell function and survival. In the Marraffini laboratory, Paige is studying both how bacterial viruses (phages) hijack bacterial metabolic pathways to support their dissemination and how bacteria, in turn, exploit phage dependence on host metabolism to defend themselves against infection.

Eric Arsenault is a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University in the group of Professor Xiaoyang Zhu. He received his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, under the mentorship of Professor Graham Fleming. Prior to that, Arsenault earned his B.A. in chemistry and in physics from Wesleyan University.

Begüm Aydin is a postdoctoral researcher in the Laboratory of Mucosal Immunology at the Rockefeller University, working with Dr. Daniel Mucida. She received her Ph.D. from New York University and her B.S. from Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey. In her doctoral studies under the supervision of Dr. Esteban Mazzoni, Aydin studied how proneural transcription factors specify neuronal fate.

Beatrice Barra is a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Professor Dmitry Rinberg at the New York University Neuroscience Institute. She received her M.Sc. in biomedical engineering from Politecnico di Milano (Italy) and her Ph.D. in medical sciences from the University of Fribourg (Switzerland).

James Bartusek will be joining New York University as a postdoctoral fellow in the fall of 2024, hosted by Nir Bitansky. He is currently completing his Ph.D. in computer science at the University of California, Berkeley under the supervision of Sanjam Garg. His research interests are in the foundations of cryptography and quantum information. In particular, he studies how quantum technology can be utilized to improve information security and privacy, and he designs cryptographic protocols for safeguarding information and computation in the era of quantum computers.

Jarosław Błasiok is starting a postdoctoral fellowship in the Theory of Computation group at Columbia University. He is presently finishing his Ph.D. at the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University

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.

Philipp Brand is a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Dr. Vanessa Ruta at the Rockefeller University. He holds a B.S. in biology and an M.S. in genetics and evolution from the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, and a Ph.D. in population biology from the University of California, Davis.

Floor Broekgaarden is a postdoctoral fellow in astrophysics at Columbia University in the Theory and High Energy Astrophysics group. Her research focuses on “gravitational-wave paleontology”: using the collisions of black holes and neutron stars observed with gravitational waves to probe the formation, lives and deaths of massive stars across cosmic time.

Juan Esteban Rodríguez Camargo’s main area of research is arithmetic geometry, focused on the cohomology of Shimura varieties. He uses tools from condensed mathematics, representation theory and p-adic Hodge theory to understand the deeply involved relation between automorphic forms and Galois representations. In his future work, he will continue the development of the theory of solid locally analytic representations and find more applications to the p-adic local Langlands program.

Michael Chapman is going to be a postdoctoral researcher for the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University under the mentorship of Professors Subhash Khot and Oded Regev. He is currently completing his Ph.D. in pure mathematics at the Hebrew University under the supervision of Professors Alex Lubotzky and Nati Linial.

Sanchit Chaturvedi will be joining Courant Institute at NYU as a postdoctoral fellow and will be working with Prof. Vlad Vicol and Prof. Scott Armstrong. During his Ph.D., Chaturvedi has been working mathematically solving problems arising in physics with the aid of analysis and geometry. In practice, this involves studying nonlinear partial differential equations that model phenomena occurring at scales of tiny gas particles to scales of massive galaxies and black holes.

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.

Raphael (Raffi) Cohn is a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University. He earned his bachelor’s degrees in cognitive science and computer science from the University of Pennsylvania, his master’s degree in the mathematical foundations of computer science from Oxford University and his Ph.D. at the Rockefeller University.

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.

Michele Fornea will be joining the Department of Mathematics at Columbia University as a postdoctoral fellow after a year at Princeton with Professor Christopher Skinner. Fornea completed his Ph.D. at McGill University under the guidance of professors Henri Darmon and Adrian Iovita.

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.

Gily Ginosar is a postdoctoral fellow at New York University and the Flatiron Institution, in the groups of professors Dan Sanes, David Schneider and Alex Williams. She received her Ph.D. and M.Sc. in brain science from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, under the mentorship of professor Nachum Ulanovsky. Before that, Gily earned her B.Sc. in physics and cognitive sciences from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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.

Leah Houri-Zeevi is a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Leslie Vosshall at the Rockefeller University. She received her Ph.D. and M.S. from the department of neurobiology at Tel Aviv University, under the supervision of Dr. Oded Rechavi. Her graduate work focused on understanding the rules of transgenerational inheritance of non-DNA-based information.

Sophie Huiberts will be a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University in the Department of Computer Science. She is completing her Ph.D. at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica. She holds an M.S. degree in mathematics and B.S. degrees in computer science and mathematics from Utrecht University. Huiberts' work is focused on geometric aspects of combinatorial optimization.

Samra Husremović will be a postdoctoral fellow in the group of professor Xavier Roy at Columbia University. Husremović holds a B.S. degree from Bates College and will graduate with a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley under the mentorship of professor Kwabena Bediako. Husremović’s research sits at the liminal space between chemistry, physics and engineering, with a focus on manipulating emergent physics in atomically thin crystals through targeted synthetic modifications. Her overarching goal is to achieve quantum states relevant to computing applications.

Tomas Kay is a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Dr. Daniel Kronauer at the Rockefeller University. His research uses ants to understand the evolution of social behavior and how social interactions shape behavior from molecular and evolutionary perspectives.

Patrick Kennedy is a postdoctoral researcher studying the evolution of animal social behavior. Starting in January 2021, he will be based at Columbia University, working with Dr. Dustin Rubenstein. He will be focusing on ecological and climatic drivers of social insect cooperation, supported by the Simons Junior Fellowship and a Marie Curie Global Fellowship, using theoretical models and field experiments with African wasps.

Ella King is a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Soft Matter Research at New York University, working with David Grier, and is a visiting scholar at Flatiron Institute. King’s work spans soft matter physics, materials design and biological physics. For her Ph.D., she developed inverse design methods for bio-inspired and non-equilibrium self-assembling materials, and showed for the first time how to directly and simultaneously design kinetics and structure in self-assembly.

Megan Kirchgessner is a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. Robert Froemke at the New York University School of Medicine. She received her Ph.D. in neurosciences from the University of California, San Diego, and her B.A. in cognitive sciences and psychology from Rice University. She is interested in how neural circuits for sensory processing are constructed and modified by experience and used for social behaviors.

Zhanat Koshenov is a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Dr. Timothy Ryan at Weill Cornell Medicine. He received his B.S. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and his Ph.D. from Medical University of Graz, Austria. During his doctoral studies in the laboratory of Dr. Wolfgang Graier, Zhanat investigated cellular energy metabolism and its molecular fine tuning in cancer and pancreatic beta cells. His work demonstrated differential calcium ion regulation of mitochondrial energy production in health and disease. His work in pancreatic beta cells provides potential link between neurodegenerative diseases and diabetes. Zhanat was awarded Austrian Award of Excellence for his doctoral dissertation.

Žiga Krajnik will be joining the Physics department of New York University as a postdoctoral fellow with Professor Aditi Mitra. His research lies at the intersections of nonequilibrium statistical physics, integrability and mathematical physics. It primarily deals with low-dimensional interacting many-body systems, an interest sparked during his master's when he studied super-diffusion in non-abelian integrable spin chains and found they are described by the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang universality.

Christopher Lafferty will be a postdoctoral researcher with György Buzsáki at the NYU Neuroscience Institute. His work will focus on the link between sleep disturbances, hippocampal malfunction and memory consolidation. He plans to record and manipulate the activity of reward circuits during periods of hippocampal synchrony (SPW-Rs) while mice are asleep and observe the resultant long-term behavioral changes and brain plasticity effects of such closed-loop perturbations.

Lachlan Lancaster will be joining the Department of Astronomy at Columbia University where he will be working with Professor Greg Bryan on understanding the formation and evolution of star clusters. Lachlan is currently finishing his Ph.D. at Princeton University where he has worked on a number of topics in theoretical astrophysics, including cosmology, exotic dark matter models and galactic dynamics.

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.

Isabel Low is a postdoctoral neuroscientist in Dr. Dmitriy Aronov's lab at Columbia University. She received her Ph.D. in neurosciences from Stanford University and her B.A. in neuroscience and creative writing from Bowdoin College. Isabel is investigating how different parts of the brain communicate to transform memories into actions.

Emily Mackevicius is currently a postdoctoral neuroscientist at Columbia University in the lab of Professor Dmitriy Aronov. She received her B.S. in mathematics at the University of Chicago, and her Ph.D. in neuroscience at MIT, in the lab of Professor Michale Fee. Her research investigates what learning mechanisms in the brain give us the power to form and use memories.

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.

Francesca Mignacco is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for the Physics of Biological Function, a joint effort between the Graduate Center at City University of New York and Princeton University. Her research interests are at the crossroads of statistical physics, machine learning and computational neuroscience. Her graduate research focused on the search for theoretical foundations of machine learning using methods and knowledge from statistical physics.

Amy Norovich is a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Dr. Andrés Bendesky in the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University. She received her B.S. in biology from MIT and her Ph.D. in biology from Columbia University.

Luke Olsen is a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Dr. Paul Cohen at the Rockefeller University. He holds a B.S. in health promotion from Emporia State University, an M.S. in exercise physiology from the University of Kansas, and a Ph.D. in cell biology and physiology from the University of Kansas Medical Center.

Oliver Philcox will be joining the High Energy Theory Group at Columbia University as a postdoctoral fellow with Professors Lam Hui and Colin Hill. He is currently completing his Ph.D. in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University, under the supervision of Professors David Spergel and Matias Zaldarriaga, and is a visiting student at the Institute for Advanced Study.

Benjamin Pineau will be joining the Courant Institute at New York University as a postdoctoral fellow and will be working under the mentorship of professor Vlad Vicol. Pineau is completing his Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley under the supervision of professor Daniel Tataru. Previously, he completed his BSc. in mechanical engineering at the University of Alberta.

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.

Wenzer Qin will join the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics at New York University as a postdoctoral fellow working alongside professor Ken Van Tilburg. Wenzer is broadly interested in theoretical cosmology and dark matter phenomenology. One of the goals driving her research is to elucidate the fundamental nature of dark matter by understanding its impact on astrophysical and cosmological probes.

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.

Leslie Sibener is a postdoctoral fellow in Priya Rajasethupathy’s lab at Rockefeller University. She earned her Ph.D. in neurobiology and behavior at Columbia University with Dr. Rui Costa, and her B.S. in neuroscience and B.A. in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University. Leslie is interested in studying why specific memories are selected for long term storage, while others are forgotten.

Magdalena Siwek is a postdoctoral fellow in astrophysics at Columbia University in the Theory and High Energy Astrophysics divisions. She completed her B.Sc. and M.Sci. in astronomy and physics at the University of Glasgow in 2017, and her Ph.D. in astronomy at Harvard University in 2024.

Cynthia Steinhardt is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Center for Theoretical Neuroscience at Columbia University. She graduated with an A.B. in neuroscience from Princeton University and received her Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She will be working with Professor Larry Abbott on creating network models of how electric fields drive neural populations. Her focus will be on understanding how the auditory stream responds and adapts to cochlear implant stimulation, to restore complex abilities, such as speech perception to patients.

Kaia Tombak is a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Jessica Rothman’s nutritional ecology laboratory at Hunter College, CUNY. Tombak is interested in the ecological factors that drive individuals to group and societies to take different shapes, such as egalitarian or hierarchical structures, stable or fission-fusion groups, and mate-guarding vs. territorial mating strategies.

Andre B. Toussaint is a postdoctoral research scientist in the laboratory of Dr. Ishmail Abdus-Saboor in the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University. Prior to arriving at Columbia, Andre earned his Ph.D. in psychology and neuroscience at Temple University under the mentorship of Dr. Mathieu Wimmer.

Pooja Viswanathan is a postdoctoral researcher with Dr. Erin L. Rich at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She holds Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in neuroscience completed at the University of Tübingen and the International Max Planck Research School.

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.

Max Xu is joining the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University as a postdoctoral researcher. Xu completed his Ph.D. at Stanford University under the supervision of professor Kannan Soundararajan and professor Jacob Fox. Prior to Stanford, Xu received a M.A. in mathematics from the University of Cambridge, where he was based at Trinity College and mentored by professor Peter Varju. Before Cambridge, Xu obtained a B.S. in mathematics from University College London where his mentor was professor Andrew Granville.

Dr. Lynn Yap is a postdoctoral research fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Richard Axel in the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University. She completed her Ph.D. in the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, where she worked with Dr. Michael E. Greenberg. Prior to Harvard, she received her B.S. in chemistry and biology from Yale University.

Anastasia-Maria Zavitsanou is a postdoctoral research scientist in the laboratory of Dr. Ishmail Abdus-Saboor in the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University. She holds a B.Sc. in biochemistry from Imperial College in London and a Ph.D. in immunology from NYU School of Medicine.

Songtian Sonia Zhang will be joining the Department of Physics at Columbia University as a postdoctoral research fellow in Professor Dmitri Basov’s group. Zhang obtained her bachelor’s in physics at the University of Waterloo and her Ph.D. from the Princeton University physics department under Professor Zahid Hasan. Zhang was also awarded the Kusaka Memorial Prize by this department for outstanding performance in research and professional promise.