People in the DiCarlo Lab
Principal Investigator
Dr. DiCarlo was named Investigator at the M.I.T. McGovern Institute for Brain Research and Assistant Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences in 2002, was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2009, and became Department Head of the Brain and Cognitive Sciences in 2012. He received his M.D. and Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 1998 and did his postdoctoral work at Baylor College of Medicine. His research group is focused on understanding the neuronal representations and computational algorithms that underlie visual object recognition in primates.
Postdoctoral Researchers
Najib received his PhD from NYU. He is particularly thrilled with the Red Sox' recent World Series win.
Elias came to the DiCarlo Lab by way of Johns Hopkins. He studies object processing in inferotemporal cortex using fMRI and neurophysiology.
Published as Seyed-Reza Afraz up to Dec 2008, Arash got his MD from Tehran University of Medical Sciences and PhD in Psychology from Harvard University. He claims to be interested in almost everything! Particularly in object vision, history and visual arts. Arash's website.
Coming from a loving and supportive portuguese family, Nicolas was born in France where he graduated with two M.Sc. in computer science (Software Engineering and Artificial Intelligence). Attracted by multicultural experiences and highly motivated by exploring intellectual opportunities abroad, he studied in Brazil, Korea and Switzerland before coming to MIT to complete his degrees in Jim DiCarlo's Lab. Nicolas received his PhD from the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences in December 2010. His current interests are in high-throughput computational neuroscience and biology-inspired silicon intelligence with emphasis on vision. Nicolas divides his spare time between sports, traveling and managing the music association he co-founded. Nicolas' Website
Dan joined the lab in the fall of 2010.
Charles joined the lab in December 2011. Charles' Website
Graduate Students
Ha is interested in elucidating fundamental mechanisms of the brain, especially visual object recognition. Having majored in physics, he is enjoying the deluge of all the stuff of neuroscience, hoping to quickly collect the "critical mass" needed to be a good neuroscientist. Other than sciences, Ha is a big fan of beer, coffee roasting, cocktail, Chopin, electronics tinkering, Feynman, piano, swimming, and typography. Ha is from South Korea. Ha's website
Lab Manager and Technical Assistant
Kailyn received her BA in Psychobiology from Wheaton College in 2009.
Computer Programmer and Software Developer
Undergraduates (UROP)
Lab Alumni
Abhijit Bendale. Abhijit is a visiting student from University of Colorado - Colorado Springs. He is increasingly enjoying the lunch time conversations in DiCarlo Lab. He has a modest ambition of solving the problem of Object Recognition. Apart from being a humble grad student, he is excited about his recent purchase of a Canon SX110... And yes he is missing the mountain biking!!! Abhi's website
Alexander Papanastassiou, MD Alex comes from a background of neurosurgery, and has completed his project with Hans Op de Beeck studying learning effects with fMRI. He is currently back in the world of human neurosurgery.
Ben Kennedy Software Engineer/Programmer. Ben is from an electrical engineering background, and is interested in developing tools to further research in science. The lab's server misses him deeply.
Benoit Corda Benoit is a masters student from the University of Technology of Compiègne in France. He is currently doing his M.Sc thesis (Computer Science /Artificial Intelligence) working on computational neuroscience inspired by recent neuronal and behavioral research in the lab. His project in the lab was organized around trying to apply different models to perform motion tracking. Benoit is currently at home in France.
Chou Hung, PhD, Postdoctoral Researcher. Chou comes from a background of optical imaging and single-unit physiology in areas V1 and V2, exploring the functional modules and circuits underlying early stages of form vision. Chou's most recent work has been investigating the role of IT in visual form perception. He is currently starting up his own lab at the National Yang Ming University in Taiwan. Chou's Website
Daniel Oreper, Masters Student. Dan is working on a system for X-ray localization of electrodes in the brain, in pursuit of a Master of Engineering degree in Computer Science.Dan is currently working in Burlington, MA.
David Cox, PhD. Dave obtained his PhD in April , 2007, from the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. His current work is organized around understanding the omputational role of visual experience in shaping object recognition processes in primates. Dave is currently running his own lab at the Rowland Institute at Harvard. Lab Website
David Doukhan. David is a masters student from the EPITA (France), where he majored in Artificial Intelligence and got involved in pattern recognition projects applied to music. His main project in the lab involved working on computational neuroscience projects as a Cell Be programmer using the PlayStation 3, among other projects. David is currently home in France.
Davide Zoccolan, PhD. Davide obtained his PhD at the International School for Advanced Studies of Trieste (Italy) with a thesis on the neural coding of sensory motor responses in the medicinal leech. The aim of his current project is to investigate the computational properties of inferotemporal neurons underlying object recognition in cluttered visual scenes. He is currently working with Dave Cox at the Rowland Institute. Davide's Lab Website
Edith Reshef, UROP. Edith graduated from MIT in 2011.
Hans Op de Beeck, PhD, Postdoctoral Researcher. Hans received his PhD at the University of Leuven (Belgium) where he studied the processes underlying visual shape categorization in monkeys and human subjects through single-unit physiology and psychophysics (see http://www.psy.kuleuven.ac.be/~odbeeckh). He has been investigating the effect of learning on object recognition in monkeys and humans using fMRI in a collaboration between Jim DiCarlo and Nancy Kanwisher, and is currently home in Belgium.
Jennie Deutsch, Lab Manager/Technical Assistant. Jennie is currently pursuing a Master's of Laboratory Animal Science at Drexel University College of Medicine.
Marie Maloof, Technical Assistant/Manager of BCS Teaching Lab. Marie splits her time between the lab and the BCS Teaching Lab (see the Courses section). Marie is currently working in another lab in BCS.
Marino Pagan. Marino was a visiting student from Pisa, Italy. He worked with Nicole Rust and Najib Majaj.
Mehdi Mirza. Mehdi was a visiting student, working with the computational group. Having a background in Physics and Computer Science, he is interested in vision and object categorization problems and understanding how our brain does it and how machines could do it inspired by the brain. He is now pursuing his PhD in the Swiss Alps.
Nadja Oertelt. Nadja first joined the lab as a UROP, and stayed to complete a variety of projects. She is currently working at the Rowland Institute with Dave Cox.
Nicole Rust, PhD. Nicole obtained a PhD from New York University where she focused on computation and motion processing in visual areas V1 and area MT. The focus of her current work is to determine how selectivity, tolerance and sparseness interact and change along the object recognition pathway. Nicole is currently starting her own lab at UPenn. Nicole's Lab Page
Nuo Li, PhD. Nuo received his PhD from the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences in December, 2010. He will be pursuing a Postdoctoral Research position at Janelia Farm, HHMI in the Summer 2011.
Patrick Mayo, Lab Technician. Patrick is happily working on his PhD in Neuroscience in Marc Sommer's lab at the University of Pittsburgh. He is researching neural representations of time their relation to visual and oculomotor function. He deeply misses Jim's whimsical stories about AJ Foyt.
Yihvan Vuong. Master of Engineering in Biomedical Engineering 2004. Yihvan is currently working near Washington, DC.
Phil (Xiyuan) ZHANG. Phil is a visiting graduate student from Mines ParisTech (Ecole des Mines de Paris), one of the most prominent French generalist engineering schools. He is investigating benchmarks of image datasets to provide definite evolution force for vision models. Phil is also interested in high performance computer techniques, such EC2 cloud computing, MPI and GPU etc.
Youssef Barhomi. Youssef is a Masters student from Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, France. He is interested in human-machine interfaces. He is currently working with Nicolas Pinto on object recognition algorithms.
