Wei Ji Ma
wjma@bcm.edu
CV | Personal site

Wei Ji Ma is Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at BCM and holds an adjunct appointment in the Department of Psychology at Rice University. He received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics (string theory) from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, in 2001. He went on to learn computational neuroscience as a postdoc under the guidance of Christof Koch (Caltech) and Alex Pouget (University of Rochester).

Ronald van den Berg
Postdoc
rvdberg@cpu.bcm.edu
CV

Ronald van den Berg received his Ph.D. in Computing Science from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, in 2009. His interests are in statistical modeling of perceptual and behavioral decision making, testing these models psychophysically, and studying their neural basis. He is currently involved in projects related to visual crowding, visual search, and visual short-term memory.

Masih Rahmati
MSc student
rahmati@bcm.tmc.edu

Masih is a MSc candidate in Biomedical Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden and is doing his master thesis at BCM. His project focuses on the neural implementation of causal inference. His other research interests are perceptual decision making, computational vision, neural networks, mathematical modeling and image processing.

Patrick Storer
Graduate student

Patrick Storer is a graduate student in the Neuroscience Program at BCM, doing a two-month rotation in our lab. He did his undergraduate studies in Bioengineering at Rice University. His interests include visual perception and population coding. His project in the lab is to compare decoding methods on V1 population activity.

Ryan George
Project intern

Ryan George is an undergraduate student in Computational and Applied Mathematics at Rice University, with a strong interest in neuroscience. In the lab, Ryan worked on an orientation memory task from Oct 2008 to Jan 2009. After spending half a year studying in Dunedin, New Zealand, he joined the lab again in August 2009. His current project concerns categorical decision-making under uncertainty.

Karen Marsden
Project intern

Karen Marsden is an undergraduate at Rice University, majoring in bioengineering and psychology with plans to go to medical school. She is working jointly in our lab and with Pearl Chiu, on the neural basis of human motivation.

Wen-Chuang Chou
Project Intern, Apr-Oct 2009

Wen-Chuang Chou received his M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of New York University. In the lab, he worked on characterizing the limitations of visual short-term memory. His other research interests include neural coding, sensory processing, biomedical signal processing (EEG and fMRI), and neural networks. Wen-Chuang is now a PhD student at the University of Goettingen, Germany.

Trevor Holland
Project Intern (Oct 2008-Aug 2009)

Trevor Holland is an undergraduate student in Computer Engineering at Rice University, taking many psychology classes on the side. He has done internships at Hewlett-Packard's server hardware division. In the lab, he studies aspects of auditory-visual integration. His other interests include consciousness, human perception of randomness, Bayesian inference in cognition, and visualizing higher dimensions. Trevor is currently teaching English in Taiwan.

David Krueger
Summer student (2009)

David Krueger is an undergraduate studying math at Reed College. At the lab, he worked on a Bayesian inference model for sensory integration in a same/different task, jointly with Kresimir Josic. His far-flung interests include consciousness, computing and AI, philosophy and ethics, physics, (rock) music, and anything interesting.

Noam Roth
Summer student (2009)

Noam Roth is an undergraduate student in Mathematics and Cognitive Neuroscience at Washington University in St. Louis. In the lab, she worked on population coding in visual cortex neurons. Her research interests include perception and sensory processing, and neural bases for cognition and memory.

Sam Poulos
Summer student (2009)

Samuel Poulos is an undergraduate in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.  He was part of the Summer Medical and Research Training Program (SMART), a 9-week internship hosted by BCM. His project focused on the way people update their expectations while viewing sequences of visual stimuli, and on quantifying surprise. Sam plans on attending graduate school in a field related to neuroscience. His other interests include neuroanatomy, computer programming, and hiking.

Wei Huang
Graduate student (Oct-Dec 2008)

Wei Huang is a graduate student in the Neuroscience Program at BCM. He completed his undergraduate degree in Biology at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Hefei (China). During his two-month rotation in the lab, Wei worked on modeling change detection using a Bayesian observer model. Wei is now working in Dr. Mauro Costa-Mattioli's lab.  

Elaina Bolinger
Project intern (Oct-Dec 2008)

Elaina was a visiting undergraduate at Rice University, majoring in biology and neuroscience. In the lab, she worked on a spatial short-term memory task. She graduated from Jacobs University (Germany) and is now a graduate student at the University of Tuebingen, Germany.

The PhD Program in Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX

Neuroscientists have increasingly come to recognize that theory and computational approaches are essential to understanding the human brain. Baylor College of Medicine is at the forefront of this development, with a core group of researchers working to incorporate theoretical and quantitative methods into studies of sensation and cognition in health and psychiatric disease. The Graduate Program in Neuroscience offers students with a strong quantitative and analytical background the opportunity to apply their skills to challenging problems in brain research, while receiving world-class training across the breadth of neuroscience.

Physics, mathematics, computer science, and engineering are not traditionally associated with investigating human perception and cognition. Yet students from these and related disciplines often possess the skills and mindset necessary to help build theoretical frameworks for experimental data. In the Department of Neuroscience at BCM, this can take on many forms, such as advanced analysis of neuroimaging data, computational studies using animal models of sensation and cognition, investigating the neural mechanisms of time perception, modeling anomalies of reward processing in psychiatric patients, studying the dynamics of decision-making in groups, or developing probabilistic theories of human perception.

The computationally oriented neuroscience laboratories at BCM also conduct human behavioral, neuroimaging or neurophysiological studies, thereby allowing for a direct and fruitful interplay between theory and experiment. This is aided by state-of-the-art imaging and computing facilities, as well as active collaborations with other neurophysiological laboratories and clinical divisions. Students of this new approach will acquire the tools and training that will position them uniquely for groundbreaking interdisciplinary research after the completion of their program, as well as for many other possible career paths.

The graduate program leading to a Ph.D. in neuroscience is designed as a five-year program. In the first year, students complete basic courses that provide them with a strong background in all facets of neuroscience. Concurrently, they familiarize themselves with ongoing research through rotations in the laboratories of Neuroscience faculty of their choice. At the end of the first year, students choose an advisor, enter into the lab full-time, and develop suitable thesis research projects. At this stage, several electives devoted to advanced theoretical and computational topics are available.

For more information about the neuroscience laboratories at BCM with a theoretical/computational focus, visit the website of the Computational Psychiatry Unit at http://cpu.bcm.edu/labs.html and the website of the Gulf Coast Consortium for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience, accessible from http://neuro.neusc.bcm.tmc.edu/?sct=emp_tcn. For more information about the Graduate Program, visit http://neuro.bcm.edu/think or contact Dr. Mariella De Biasi, Director of Graduate Studies, at debiasi@bcm.edu.

P.S. There is no application fee and our Program offers free tuition and a very competitive stipend!