Congratulations to Asal Nouri who successfully defended her doctoral dissertation on Friday, March 24th, 2023 and will graduate at the May 2023 Commencement Ceremony at FAU with the PhD in Complex Systems and Brain Sciences. Asal’s dissertation was completed under the guidance of Dr’s William Hahn and Edward Ester (University of Nevada) with Committee Members Dr’s Summer Sheremata and Elan Barenholtz and entitled “Mechanisms of Selective Attention in Working Memory, Modeled from Human’s Alpha Band Oscillations.” Following graduation Asal will begin a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr’s Chad Forbes and Susan Schneider at FAU.
Jennifer Giordano, a second year Ph.D. student in the Graduate Neuroscience Training Program and Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences featured on the College of Science web page and the Rubin and Cindy Gruber Sandbox web site Spotlight Stories. Read more.
The grant will help transform faculty diversity and ensure appropriate representation of women in STEM. This grant continues the work of the late Emmanuelle Tognoli, Ph.D., who served as a research professor in FAU’s Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences within the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science. Read more.
Congratulations to Paul Morris who successfully defended his doctoral dissertation on Friday, September 23, 2022 and will graduate at the December Commencement Ceremony at FAU with the PhD in Complex Systems and Brain Sciences. Paul’s dissertation was completed under the guidance of Dr’s William Hahn and Elan Barenholtz with Committee Member Dr. Paul Peluso (College of Education, FAU) and entitled “Computation in Self-Attention Networks.’
Congratulations to Michael Teti who successfully defended his doctoral dissertation on Friday, September 16, 2022 and will graduate at the December Commencement Ceremony at FAU with the PhD in Complex Systems and Brain Sciences. Michael’s dissertation was completed under the guidance of Dr’s Elan Barenholtz and William Hahn with Committee Members Dr’s William Alexander, Benjamin Migliori, (Los Alamos National Laboratory) and Garrett Kenyon (Los Alamos National Laboratory) and entitled “Cracking the Sparse Code: Lateral Competition Forms Robust Vl-Like Representations in Convolutional Neural Networks.’
Dr. Aliza Sloan and her Co-Advisors Profs. Scott Kelso and Nancy Jones enjoy a moment prior to her 'hooding' at the Summer Commencement Ceremony for the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science on August 9, 2022 (photo courtesy Zach Greathouse). Aliza's doctoral research "Development of Infant Agency" was conducted in the Human Brain & Behavior Laboratory (HBBL) at the Center for Complex Systems & Brain Sciences. She is hoping to continue her work in the newly developed SOAL (Self-Organizing Agency Lab) which will be devoted to understanding how agency emerges in human beings at both behavioral and neural levels of organization.
Sadly, Dr. Emmanuelle Tognoli passed away in the early morning hours of Saturday, April 23rd 2022 following a valiant struggle to overcome a rare and aggressive cancer, which ultimately took her life. Dr. Tognoli was a Research Professor in the Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences and Research Affiliate Professor in the Department of Physics. Her passing is a great loss for both programs. Dr. Tognoli was a very talented scientist, a respected colleague, and a beloved mentor and role model for her many students. She will be dearly missed by all who knew her. Read more.
Congratulations to Young Seon “Sunny” Shin who successfully defended her doctoral dissertation on Friday, March 25, 2022 and graduated at the May Commencement Ceremony at FAU with the PhD in Complex Systems and Brain Sciences. Sunny’s dissertation was completed under the guidance of Dr. Summer Sheremata and Committee Members Dr’s William Alexander, Hang Sang ‘Sammy’ Hong, and Eddie Ester (University of Nevada) and entitled “EEG Signals Represent Updated Memory Representations in Visual Working Memory". Following graduation, Sunny has taken a postdoctoral position with Dr. Stephen Coombes in the Laboratory for Rehabilitation Neuroscience at the University of Florida.
Congratulations to Rachel St. Clair who successfully defended her doctoral dissertation on Friday, March 18, 2020 and graduated with the PhD in Complex Systems and Brain Sciences at the May Commencement Ceremony at FAU. Rachel’s dissertation was completed under the guidance of Drs. Elan Barenholtz & William Hahn and Susan Schneider (Committee member) and entitled “Preserving Knowledge in Simulated Behavioral Action Loops". Following graduation, Rachel is working with a hi-tech start-up company in AGI.
Congratulations to Alex Clark who successfully defended his doctoral dissertation on Friday, February 25, 2022 and was awarded the PhD in Complex Systems and Brain Sciences at the May Commencement Ceremony at FAU. Alex’s dissertation was completed under the guidance of Drs. Elan Barenholtz & William Hahn and William Alexander (Committee member) and entitled “Behavioral Analysis of Deep Convolutional Neural Networks for Image Classification". Following graduation, Alex is working for a hi-tech start-up company in Boca Raton.
FAU Department of Psychology and Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences Assistant Professor, Carmen Varela, Ph.D., recently received the Alzheimer’s Association’s “Research Fellowship to Promote Diversity” award to investigate the relationship between sleep patterns and one’s overall brain health. Read more.
Congratulations to Emmanuelle Tognoli, Ph.D, a research professor in the Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences, who with collaborators Christopher Beetle, Ph.D., associate professor of physics and Christine Williams, Ph.D., professor emeritus of nursing, were awarded a $675,000 grant from the NIH-NIA entitled “The Mathematics of Relatedness.” The research will design experiences, or mathematical models, that give older adults a chance to form meaningful social interactions while aiding for age-related impairments. Read more.
Congratulations to Darwin Romulus who graduated with a Ph.D. in Complex Systems and Brain Science at the Summer Commencement Ceremonies in August, 2021. Darwin’s dissertation was completed under the guidance of Drs. Sang Hong and Howard Hock and entitled “The Assessment of the Role of Microsaccadic Eye Movements in Bistable Motion Perception.” Darwin’s dissertation committee also included William Hahn, Ph.D.. Following graduation, Darwin will move to Seattle where he will start a job with Microsoft.
Congratulations to Kenton McDowell who graduated with a Ph.D. in Complex Systems and Brain Science at the Summer Commencement Ceremonies in August, 2021. Kenton’s dissertation was completed under the guidance of Summer Sheremata, Ph.D., and entitled “Functional Brain Connectivity Associated with Repetitive Behavior in Autism Spectrum Disorder.” Kenton’s dissertation committee included Ali Danesh, Ph.D., (FAU College of Education) and Mark Halko, Ph.D., (Harvard University). Following graduation Kenton will attend law school at the University of Miami.
Congratulations to James Sullivan who graduated with a Ph.D. in Complex Systems and Brain Sciences at the Spring Commencement Ceremonies in May 2021. James’ dissertation was completed under the guidance of Howard Prentice, Ph.D., (co-Chair), Wen Shen, Ph.D., (co-Chair) and Janet C. Blanks, Ph.D., and entitled “A Cell Biological and Electrophysiological Study of Mouse Retina.” James’ dissertation committee included, Howard Prentice, Ph.D., Wen Shen, Ph.D., Robert P. Vertes, Ph.D., Ken Dawson-Scully, Ph.D., and external member Janet Blanks, Ph.D.. James is currently performing postdoctoral research with Robert Vertes, Ph.D., at the center.
Bryan Conklin Earns Ph.D. in Complex Systems and Brain SciencesCongratulations to Dr. Bryan Conklin who graduated with his Ph.D. in Complex Systems and Brain Sciences in December 2020. Bryan’s dissertation was completed under the guidance of Dr. William Alexander (initially Dr. Steven Bressler), entitled “The Structural Organization and Spectral Characteristics of Visual Working Memory in the Monkey Frontoparietal Network. ” Bryan’s dissertation committee included Dr. William Alexander (Chair), Dr. Randy D. Blakely, and external members Dr. Charles M. Gray of Montana State University and Dr. Earl K. Miller of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Following graduation, Bryan joined Dr. Dobromir Rahney’s laboratory for Perception, Neuroimaging and Modeling at the Georgia Institute for Technology in Atlanta.
Dimitri Falco Earns Ph.D. in Complex Systems and Brain SciencesCongratulations to Dr. Dimitri Falco who graduated with his Ph.D. in Complex Systems and Brain Sciences in August. Dimitri’s dissertation was completed under the guidance of Dr. Steven Bressler and entitled “A comparison of task-relevant node identification techniques and their impact on network inferences: Group-aggregated subject-specific and voxel wise approaches” His dissertation committee included, Dr. Steven Bressler (Chair), Dr. William Hahn, Dr. Elan Barenholtz and external member Dr. Vaibhav Diwadkar of Wayne State University. After turning down post-docs at UPenn and John Hopkins, Dimitri went to Ann Arbor, Michigan to work for NovaDynamics as a Machine Learning Scientist and part of a new software development team. NovoDynamics uses predictive analytics in the healthcare industry.
Sadly, Dr. Armin Fuchs passed away in the early hours of Saturday morning, June 29, 2019, after valiantly struggling to overcome cancer which ultimately, and suddenly, took his life. Dr. Fuchs was a Professor in the Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences and Department of Physics. His passing is a great loss for both programs. Those who knew him well knew him to be a gentleman, a good friend, and a very talented scientist and teacher will miss him dearly.
Armin completed his Ph.D. work with Professor Dr. Herman Haken, the well-known father of Laser Theory, at the Institute for Theoretical Physics and Synergetics, at the University of Stuttgart. From 1991 -1994, Armin was a post-doctoral fellow in the Center working with Professor J.A. Scott Kelso in applying his knowledge in Synergetics and Dynamical Systems to bring new insight to how the brain might function and joined the center as an assistant professor in 1995. Read more.
