Alexander Fung
Research Assistant @ UChicago Neurobiology
Hi, I’m Alex 👋 I am a research assistant in Ramon Nogueira’s lab at UChicago, where I study the geometry of neural population activity and its relationship to behavior.
Broadly, my research combines data analysis and artificial neural network modeling to understand how information is encoded in large neural populations. I aim to answer questions such as:
- How is the organization of neural population activity modulated by internal states and task statistics?
- How do neural circuit properties like connectivity and activation functions shape population dynamics and behavior?
- How can we extract latent structure from noisy, high-dimensional neural data?
Before coming to UChicago, I was a research assistant with Ev Fedorenko at MIT Brain and Cognitive Sciences studying language and reasoning in brains and large language models [bioRxiv] [PNAS] [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.