Principal Investigator
Kohitij Kar (“Ko”)
Assistant Professor
Canada Research Chair in Visual Neuroscience
Research Scientists
Hamid Ramezanpour
Google Scholar | Personal Website
former CIHR Postdoctoral Fellow
Topics: NHP work, autism, dynamic scene perception, ultrasound stimulation
Postdoctoral Scholars
Matteo Dunnhofer
Marie Curie Fellow
Topics: Visual object motion, computer vision, object tracking, neuroAI
Ezgi Fide
co-supervised with Shayna Rosenbaum, VISTA Postdoctoral fellow
Topics: Human Behavioral/Imaging, memory, hippocampal lesion, sensory-memory interactions
Jean de Dieu Uwisengeyimana
2023 YorkU Provost Fellow
Topics: computational neuro, object-motion perception
Maren Wehrheim
Connected Minds Fellow
Topics: Modeling visual cognition, neural mechanisms
Sabine Muzellec
Connected Minds Fellow
Topics: Neural Decoding, Explainability, E/I modeling, autism
Lynn Sörensen
co-supervised with Jim DiCarlo
Topics: Comp. neuro, plasticity in IT during category learning
Full-time research assistants and lab technicians
Graduate Students
Elizaveta Yakubovskaya
Topics: NHP work, adaptation in ventral stream, dynamic scene perception, audiovisual integration
NSERC CGSM recipient, Previously NSERC USRA
Scott Hwang
Topics: NHP chemogenetics
Undergraduate Students
Dominique Chuaqui
Capstone Project
Topics: ASD, XAI
Umael Qudrat
NSERC USRA, Capstone Project
Topics: NHP work, visual abstraction and drawing recognition
Mishel Feigin
Topics: Role of Cell types
BIOL 4000 (Thesis)
Graduate Student/ Postdoctoral Collaborators
Kushin Mukherjee
University of Wisconsin- Madison,
Topics: Computational Psychiatry
Shane (Jiaqi) Shang
Harvard University
(co-supervised with Gabriel Kreiman and Haim Sompolinsky)
Topics: Theoretical neuroscience, visual reasoning
Alumni
Soroush Ziaee (2024-25): Soroush completed his MSc Thesis with distinction in our lab on developing models of the ventral stream with multi-goal optimization. Preprint (in review), CCN paper. After his MSc, Soroush joined Vielight Inc. as an AI Engineer and Software Solutions Architect.
Anaa Salim Zafer (2022-25): Anaa completed her MSc Thesis with distinction in our lab on the effects of scene context on object discrimination in macaques. She also worked an additional year as a Research Assistant. MSc Thesis, Preprint, VSS 2024 Abstract
Divya Shah (2024-25): Divya worked in the lab for her BIOL 4000 undergraduate thesis.
Shirin Taghian Alamooti (2022-25): Shirin completed her MSc Thesis in our lab on facial expression discrimination in macaques. She also worked an additional year as a Research Assistant. MSc Thesis, Protocol Paper, VSS 2024 Abstract. After her MSc, Shirin joined the Ontario Brain Institute (OBI) as a Cloud Machine Learning Engineer.
Esna Mualla Gunay (2024-25): Mualla worked in the lab as a research assistant on monocular depth perception.
Cecilia Di Matteo (2024): Cecilia worked in the lab for 6 months for an undergraduate research practicum on intuitive physics and network modeling.
Jason Pina (2024): Jason worked in the lab for 3 months in a transitional phase and is now a postdoc with Dr. Alessandra Angelucci.
Ram Ahuja (2022-2024): Ram completed his Bachelor’s in Biology and his Honors thesis in the lab. He was awarded the best thesis award. Ram is now pursuing a degree in medicine at the University of Ottawa.
Yousif Kashef Alghetaa (2022-2024): Yousif completed his MSc in our lab. He moved on to become a PhD student at the University of Toronto.
Sara Djambazovska (2022-2024): Sara now works at Google. She is still collaborating with the lab to write-up and publish the studies she led in the lab.
Arshiya Mishra (Fall 2023): Undergraduate research practicum student. Arshiya worked with Shirin, learning about our research on facial emotion recognition.
Yuliya Romanets (Fall 2022): Undergraduate research practicum student. Yuliya worked on developing human behavioral tasks to probe facial emotion discrimination. She moved on to the UofT Physiology master’s program.
Mina Soufi (2022-2023): Undergraduate research practicum student. Mina attended the lab to develop an overall understanding of neuroscience research methods and questions.
