Associate Professor
H. Stewart Parker Endowed Faculty Fellow
University of Washington, Seattle (UW)
Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Eng. (adjunct)
Dept. of Applied Mathematics (adjunct)
UW Institute of Neuroengineering
UW eScience Institute, Data Science Fellow
Weill Neurohub Investigator
Bing Wen Brunton
Principal Investigator
Ph.D. in Molecular Biology & Neuroscience, Princeton University, 2012
B.S. in Biology, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), 2006
Post Graduate
Tanvi Deora, Ph.D.
Tanvi is co-advised by Tom Daniel. She studies the role of touch in plant pollinator interactions. Moths and butterflies use a long straw-like mouthpart, the proboscis to actively explore the flowers and extract tactile information from it. Moreover, proboscis is a flexible structure and its mechanics is actively tuned as the insect is sensing. Using tools of behavioral analysis and neurophysiology, Tanvi wants to understand the sensory processing and biomechanics underlying the fundamental percept of touch.
tanvid2 at uw dot edu
Chris Dallmann, Ph.D.
Sackler Scholar in Biophysics
Chris is a postdoc co-advised with John Tuthill. He tries to better understand how the nervous system controls movement. He is currently studying how populations of motor neurons drive natural leg movements in walking fruit flies. He uses genetic tools and optical imaging to measure neural activity, markerless tracking to measure behavior, and dimensionality reduction techniques to understand the link between the two.
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Steven Peterson, Ph.D.
Ph.D., University of Michigan, Biomedical Engineering
M.S., University of Michigan, Biomedical Engineering
B.S., Washington University in St. Louis, Biomedical Engineering
Steven is a postdoctoral scholar co-advised by Bing Brunton and Raj Rao currently studying electrocorticography (ECoG) recordings during naturalistic movements. He received his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Michigan, performing high-density electroencephalography (EEG) recordings during perturbed balance beam walking in the lab of Daniel Ferris. His interests are real-world neuroimaging, neural signal processing, and cortical integration of sensory information.
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Ali Weber, Ph.D.
Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow
Ph.D., University of Washington, Neuroscience
B.A., University of Chicago, Biological Sciences
Ali is a postdoc co-advised with Tom Daniel. She is studying how organisms make efficient use of limited information to perform complex tasks. Taking the hawkmoth as a model system, she investigates how information from a small number of mechanoreceptors on the wings are used in flight control. She employs a combination of experimental and computational techniques to study how these sensors respond during flight and how one might optimally array a set of these sensors to best provide feedback during flight.
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DPhil (Ph.D.), University of Oxford, Mathematics
M.S., Technische Universität at Berlin, Theoretical Physics
B.S., Technische Universität Berlin, Physics
Alice is a postdoctoral scholar and a Univeristy of Washington data science postdoctoral fellow. She received a DPhil in Mathematics from the University of Oxford for research advised by Mason Porter on entropy and robustness of dynamics on networks. Her research interests include mathematical modelling of dynamical processes on networks and applications in neuroscience, computational biology, and complex systems.
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Ph.D., University of Washington, Biology
B.S., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mechanical Engineering
Katie is a postdoc co-advised with David Perkel. She is an evolutionary biologist primarily interested in how anatomical novelty influences the evolution of animal locomotion. Her doctoral project in the lab of Sharlene Santana at UW focused on a unique skeletal element in the bat hindlimb wing membrane. Currently, she is trying to understand the exceptional lumbosacral spinal cord of birds, which may act as a mechanosensory structure that helps birds balance.
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Graduate Students
Aaron D. Garcia
Ph.D. student in Neuroscience
B.A., Boston University, Neuroscience
UWIN Neuroengineering Grad Fellow
NSF Grad Fellow
Aaron is co-advised with Beth Buffalo. His primary research interests revolve around trying to better understand the neural correlates of learning and memory in monkeys. He is currently applying dimensionality reduction techniques to high-density local field potential data recorded from the hippocampus of monkeys playing video games. The goal is to reduce the complexity of the data and try to deduce task-relevant oscillatory activity. When he's not being MATLAB's slave, he is likely either playing a fighting game, on a boat/hiking, or at one of the many awesome breweries in Seattle.
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Seth Hirsh
Ph.D. student in Physics
B.A., University of California, Berkeley, Physics and Applied Mathematics
Seth is co-advised with Nathan Kutz. His primary research is developing data-driven techniques for analyzing spatio-temporal data for cases where the temporal modes are periodic. He also applies these techniques to analyze experimental neural recordings.
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Pierre Karashchuk
Ph.D. student in Neuroscience
B.A., University of California, Berkeley, Statistics and Computer Science
NSF Grad Fellow
Pierre is a graduate student co-advised with John Tuthill.
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Satpreet Singh
Ph.D. student, Electrical Engineering
M.S., Oregon State University, Computer Science
M.S., University of Iowa, Electrical & Computer Engineering
B.E., Savitribai Phule Pune University, Electronics Engineering
Sat is a grad student co-advised with Raj Rao. He is applying Machine Learning/AI to research questions in Neuroscience and Behavior. He is also broadly interested in Computational and Cognitive neuroscience.
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Michelle Hickner
Ph.D. student in Mechanical Engineering
M.S., University of Washington, Applied Mathematics
B.A., Oberlin College, Physics
Michelle is co-advised with Steve Brunton. Her current research is on sparse sensor placement for control and categorization in biological and engineered systems. She is interested in bio-inspired mathematical methods.
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Ellie Strandquist
Ph.D. student, University of Washington, Computer Science
B.S., Virginia Commonwealth University, Computer Science
Gabrielle (Ellie) is co-advised with Rajesh Rao studying electrocorticography (ECoG) recordings of natural behaviors. She received her B.S. in Computer Science while researching deep neural networks to solve bioinformatics problems. She enjoys studying multiple disciplines to further her research, and is currently employing techniques from machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) to analyze speech and neural processes. Outside of the lab she can be found traveling, tango dancing or making pastries.
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Zoe Steine-Hanson
Ph.D student, Computer Science
H.B.S., Oregon State University, Computer Science
NSF Grad Fellow
Zoe is co-advised with Rajesh Rao. She came to Seattle to work in the fascinating intersection between Neuroscience and Machine Learning. Her research interests broadly cover Machine Learning, Cognitive Science and Neuroscience. In her undergrad, she was involved with research on how gender biases manifest in software interfaces and how to fix these biases.
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Biraj Pandey
Ph.D. student in Applied Mathematics
B.S., University of Texas at Austin, Mathematics
B.S., University of Texas at Austin, Neuroscience
NSF Grad Fellow
Biraj is a graduate student in the Applied Mathematics department broadly interested at the intersection of theoretical neuroscience and machine learning. Currently, he is using frameworks from statistical learning to model and make inferences about randomly connected sparse neural systems in insect model organisms. During his undergraduate years, he used manifold learning methods and dynamical systems theory to visualize and verify the theoretically predicted ring attractor present in the mammalian head direction system. In his free time, he loves making delectable dishes in the kitchen, bumping hip-hop music, and hiking difficult trails.
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Max Gray
Ph.D. student in Computer Science & Engineering
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Undergraduates
John So
Sara Ichinaga
Applied Computational Mathematical Sciences (ACMS), expected 2021
Nathan Davis
Computer Science and Engineering
Zeynep Toprakbasti
Honors Computer Science student, expected 2023
Zeynep is an Honors computer science student at the University of Washington, expecting to graduate by 2023. Zeynep is fascinated by the intersection between CS and brain sciences. Outside of her studies, she is an artist and an activist!
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Alumni
Nancy X. R. Wang, Ph.D. 2018 (next position: IBM Research)
Kameron Decker Harris, Ph.D. (next position: Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Western Washington University)
Aditya G. Nair, Ph.D. (next position: Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, University of Nevada Reno)
Nate Linden (next position: Ph.D. student at UCSD)
Prospective Grad Students
Students interested in joining the lab for graduate studies should submit applications for admission through one of the following University of Washington Ph.D. graduate programs:
Postdoc Researcher Positions
We are actively recruiting talented new postdocs to join the group! If you are excited about doing research in big data, applied mathematics, machine learning, and neuroscience, email Bing (please include a copy of your CV).