Alexander Fung
Research Assistant @ UChicago Neurobiology
Hi, I’m Alex 👋 I am a research assistant in Ramon Nogueira’s lab at UChicago, bridging machine learning and geometric approaches for neural data analysis.
My current interests lie at the intersection of statistics, machine learning, and systems neuroscience. Concretely, I seek mathematical principles of computation in biological and artificial neural circuits. I aim to develop mechanistically interpretable frameworks, addressing questions like:
- How can we extract meaningful structure from high-dimensional neural population data?
- Which learning rules and memory architectures might support efficient storage and accurate retrieval of information over the timecourses of learning?
Before coming to UChicago, I was a research assistant with Ev Fedorenko at MIT Brain and Cognitive Sciences studying language in brains and large language models [Neuropsychologia] [CCN2024]. I first fell in love with research as an undergrad at UC Berkeley studying EECS and Molecular & Cellular Biology, where I worked on the protein folding problem with Yun S. Song [bioRxiv] [PSB2022]. My research journey thus far has only been possible because of the wonderful mentorship I’ve received.