Principal Investigator

Pouya Bashivan

Assistant Professor
Department of Physiology
McGill University

CV

Graduate Students

Xiaoxuan Lei

Ph.D. student

I am a Ph.D. student in Pouya’s group. I am intrigued by how intelligent behavior emerges from neuron interactions, either biological or artificial. I build computational models of primates brain with a focus on artificial neural networks. Five facts about me: have lived in 3 different continents and North America will be the 4th one; whovian (non-certified); attempted to master Dutch, failed, same with C; 2021 (the year of ox) is my year; play the violin and good at math ;)

Maxime Daigle

Ph.D. student

I’m interested in episodic memory and memory augmented neural networks. I work on building computational models of the hippocampus. Before joining the lab, I completed my Master’s degree in Machine Learning in 2021 and received my Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Computer Science in 2019. In my free time, I like to read fiction and play tabletop games.

Motahareh Pourrahimi

M.Sc. student

I am a Masters student in IPN. I received my B.S. degree in electrical engineering at University of Tehran. I am interested in understanding the brain through computational modelling and electrophysiology, working in the intersection of neuroscience and artificial intelligence. I enjoy watching movies, reading, and drawing in my free time.

Reza Bayat

M.Sc. student

I am a master's student at the University of Montreal and a research assistant at Mila, working with Pouya Bashivan and Irina Rish. I am curious about the inner workings of neural networks (how and why they work) to build safe, robust, and reliable applications. I was interning for a year at Mila, working on adversarial robustness, which is still my primary research interest as I am doing my master's. Before that, I did my undergrad in software engineering at Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic).

Lucas Gomez

M.Sc. student

I am a Masters student in IPN. I have a background in computer science and neural network modeling. I am interested in exploring the relationship between AI and the brain, and what that relationship has to offer the field of neuroscience. In my free time I like to play soccer and ski.

Ali Saheb Pasand

Ph.D. student

I am a PhD student at Mila/McGill, fortunate to study and conduct research under the supervision of Prof. Bashivan and Prof. Richards. I got my Master of Mathematics in Computer Science at the University of Waterloo. Before delving into computer science, I earned a Bachelor of Applied Science degree in Electrical Engineering (Control and Wireless Communication Systems) from Amirkabir University of Technology and a Master of Applied Science degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering (Information theory) from the University of Waterloo. Currently, my research interests revolve around three areas that I find exciting: reducing the spurious correlation in self-supervised learning methods, improving the generalization of deep neural networks, and developing efficient episodic memory modules. The thread connecting these three areas which I am going to focus on is the need for localizing the place of memorization and affecting that area. In my free time, I enjoy reading books, visiting art galleries, and watching movies.

Undergraduate Researchers

Amirozhan Dehghani

B.Sc. student

I’m an undergraduate student majoring in Neuroscience and Computer science. I’m interested in developing hierarchical artificial neural network model of the visual cortex. I enjoy playing piano and chess in my spare time.

Alumni

Helen Ren

B.Sc. student

I’m a computer science undergraduate student who is interested in modeling brain activities computationally. I currently work on using artificial neural network to model the effect of electrical stimulation across human visual cortex. I’m also interested in how this work would help with predictive coding and also improve the adversarial robustness of deep neural networks. I like to experience different things in my life: I did an internship as a software engineer in summer 2020 and also as a data analyst in summer 2021. In my spare time, I enjoy cooking and Beijing opera.

Mark Bai

B.Sc. student

I’m a computer science and biology undergraduate student. I’m interested in the bidirectional study of neuroscience and artificial intelligence. I’m currently working on an artificial dataset that exercises visual reasoning and the working memory. I’m also interested in the application of machine learning in healthcare. I enjoy climbing and my favourite musician is Radiohead.