Past Students and Postdoctoral Fellows
(Do your best. Love what you do. Be constantly curious. And learn that it is not dumb to ask a question; it is dumb not to ask it.*)
Photograph of Pablo Blinder, Jeff Moore, Dave Matthews, Andy Shih, Celine Mateo, Wendela and Arnaud Muller and David on the occasion of Andy and Mei's wedding, 2012.
Doctoral Students
Prof. Rune W. Berg - Associate Professor, Neuroscience & Pharmacology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Dr. Timothy Cacciatore (with W. Kristan) - Senior Research Associate, Institute of Neurology, UCL, England.
Dr. Amalia Callado Pérez (with M. Deschênes) - Cervo Research Center, Université Laval, Québec City, Québec, Canada.
Dr. Yuncong Chen (with Y. Freund) - Senior Data Scientist, NEC, Princeton, NJ.
Dr. G. Omar Clay - Science for the People, Baja, Mexico.
Dr. John C. Curtis - Late of the Salk Institute, CA.
Dr. Jonathan Driscoll - Cofounder, Dimensional Industries, San Diego, CA.
Dr. Conrad Foo - Computational Scientist, Genentech, San Francisco, CA.
Prof. Karunesh Ganguly (with M.-M. Poo) - Professor, Neurology, UCSF, CA.
Dr. Daniel N. Hill - Senior Scientist, Meta/Facebook, New York, NY.
Photograph of Dan with David wearing the Meta Ray-Ban AI glasses and Neuro Band that Dan helped create. New York City, 2026.
Dr. Victory Joseph (with P. Slesinger) - Senior Scientist, Genentech, San Francisco, CA.
Dr. Diana C. Jeong - K99/R00 Research Scientist, Stanford University, CA.
Dr. Xiang Ji - Postdoctoral Fellow, Princeton, NJ.
Photograph of Jiang with David and bas relief of George Feher. Urey Hall, 2025.
Dr. Victory Joseph (with P. Slesinger) - Senior Scientist, Genentech, San Francisco, CA.
Dr. Anastasia Kurnikova (with M. Deschênes) - AI engineer, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Carlsbad, CA.
Prof. Nicole Mercer Lindsay - Assistant Professor, Weill Cornell Medical School (Burke Neurological Institute), White Plains, NY (K99/R00 recipient).
Dr. Song Mao Liao - Postdoctoral Fellow, UC San Diego, CA.
Dr. David W. Matthews - CGO, BrightInsight, San Francisco.
Dr. Samar B. Mehta - Critical Care Medicine Fellow, University of Maryland, MD.
Prof. Jeffrey D. Moore - Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences, USC, Los Angeles, CA.
Prof. Nozomi Nishimura - Associate Professor, Bioengineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
Prof. Thomas D. Parsons (with B. Salzberg) - Marie A. Moore Professor, Swine Production Medicine, University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, PA.
Dr. Kui Qian (with Y. Freund) - Data Scientist, Huawei Technologies Company, Shenzhen, China.
Prof. Lee F. Schroeder - Clinical Professor, Pathology, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, MI.
Prof. Philbert S. Tsai - Associate Teaching Professor, Physics, UC San Diego, CA (2020 Revelle Outstanding Teaching Award; 2022 Distinguished Teaching Award from the Academic Senate).
Photograph of Phil with Zoe Kleinfeld. La Jolla 1999.
Masters Students
Ms. Zaneta Ku - USC Dental School.
Dr. Benjamin Migliori - Applications Scientist, SPAWAR, San Diego, CA.
Mr. Sean O'Connor - Research Scientist, SAIC, San Diego, CA.
Dr. Christopher Rafie - Physician in Emergency Medicine, Regional Medical Center of San Jose, CA.
Mr. Hiteshwar Rao - Engineer, Juul, San Francisco, CA.
Dr. Diane Whitmer - Interim Director of Research, NeuroTexas Institute, St. David's HealthCare, Austin, TX.
Postdoctoral Fellows and Research Scientists
Dr. Kurt Ahrens - Adjunct Professor, Arcadia University, OH.
Prof. Yonitan Aljadeff - Associate Professor, Neurobiology, UC San Diego, CA.
Prof. Pablo Blinder - Associate Professor, Tel Aviv University, Israel.
Prof. Thomas Broggini - Laboratory Head, Goethe Universität / Uniklinik, Frankfurt, Germany.
Prof. Patrick J. Drew - Professor, Engineering Science and Mechanics, Pennsylvania State University, PA.
Prof. Michale S. Fee - Professor and Department Head, Brain & Cognitive Sciences, MIT, MA (American Academy of Arts and Sciences; National Academy of Sciences).
Dr. Jeffrey J. Field - Director, Center for Imaging and Surface Science, Colorado State University, CO.
Prof. David Golomb (with B. Shraiman) - Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel.
Dr. Eric Grannan (with H. Sompolinsky) - Financial Analyst, Credit Suisse, London, England.
Dr. Per M. Knutsen - Industrial Scientist, Norway.
Dr. Benjamin Holloway - Industrial Scientist, CA.
Dr. Rui Liu - Senior Optical Scientist, ByteDance, San Jose, CA.
Dr. Adrian Lozada - LifeCanvas Research, Boston, MA.
Dr. Céline Matéo - Research Scientist, Janssen Laboratories, San Diego, CA.
Prof. Lauren McElvain - Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences, USC, Los Angeles, CA.
Dr. Lisa Mellander - Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Dr. Lynne Merchant - Programmer/Analyst, SIO, UC San Diego, CA.
Dr. Arnaud Muller - Senior Research Scientist - Roche, Basil, Switzerland.
Dr. Quoc-Thang Nguyen - Late, Founder and CEO of NeurAccel Inc., San Diego, CA.
Dr. Michael J. Pesavento - 3Scan, San Francisco.
Dr. James Prechtl - Owner/Operator, AeroBio, San Diego, CA.
Dr. Charlotta Ruehlmann - Chief Physician, Hohenegg Private Clinic, Meilen, Switzerland.
Prof. Christopher B. Schaffer - Professor, Bioengineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow; Optica Fellow).
Prof. Iftach Shaked - Assistant Professor, Ariel University Medical School, Israel.
Prof. Andy Y. Shih - Professor, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, WA.
Mr. Raymond Stepnowski - Buckingham Township Manager, NJ (former Member of Technical Staff, Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies).
Prof. Philbert S. Tsai - as above, UCSD, CA.
Dr. Suri Venkatachalam - Drug Discovery Entrepreneur, India.
Prof. Ralf Wessel (with W. Kristan) - Professor, Physics, Washington University, Saint Louis, MO.
Dr. Elizabeth Yoder - Industrial Scientist, CA.
Visiting Faculty
Prof. Ehud Ahissar - Weizmann Institute, Rehovot, Israel.
Prof. Euiheon Chung - Sabbatical visitor - Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Gwangju, South Korea.
Prof. Martin Deschênes, Emeritus - Sabbatical visitor - Université Laval, Québec City, Canada.
Prof. Mathew Diamond - SISSA, Trieste, Italy.
Prof. Ford Ebner, Emeritus - Sabbatical visitor - Vanderbilt University, TN.
Prof. Bard Ermentrout - University of Pittsburgh, PA.
Prof. David Golomb - Sabbatical visitor - Ben Gurion University, Israel.
Prof. David Hansel - CNRS, Paris, France.
Prof. Zhenpeng Qin - University of Texas, Dallas, TX.
Prof. Matt Wachowiak - University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT.
