CURRICULUM VITAE

Education:
·     PhD. October 2005 – December 2009:PhD in Computational Neuroscience, International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA/ISAS),with Prof. Alessandro Treves, Thesis title: “Attractors, memory and perception”

·     B.Sc. (Double Major):
2000-2004:Biomedical Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), Tehran, Iran, with Departmental Honors (Highest) and University Distinction (Highest)
2002-2005: Control Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), Tehran, Iran (Allowed exceptionally as an award for honored students in 2002), (GPA: 17.89/20),

Positions:
·   September 2018 – present: Group Leader at Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, UCL, London. 

·   December 2012 – September 2018: Post-doctoral research fellow, Brodylab, Princeton University, Princeton Neurosci. Inst.  &   Dept. of Molecular Biology, USA

·   December 2012 – September 2018: Research Specialist, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, USA

·   December 2009 – December 2012: Post-doctoral researcher, Tactile Perception and Learning Lab, Cognitive Neuroscience Sector, SISSA/ISAS International School for Advanced Studies, Trieste

 

Publications: 

Under review: 

  1. Chunyu Duan*, Marino Pagan*, Charles Kopec, Alex Riordan, Athena Akrami, Jeffrey Erlich & Carlos Brody, ”A collicular circuit for flexible sensorimotor routing in the rat” (BioRxiv 2018)

  2. Hannah Davis*, Gina Assaf*, Lisa McCorkell*, Hannah Wei*, Ryan Low*, Yochai Re’em*, Signe Redfield, Jared Austin, Athena Akrami*, “Characterizing Long COVID in an International Cohort: 7 Months of Symptoms and Their Impact” (MedRxiv 2021)

  3. Russell N Low, Ryan J Low, Athena Akrami, “A Cytokine-based model for the pathophysiology of Long COVID symptoms” (OSF preprints 2020)

  4. Tara Van Viegen, Athena Akrami et al, “Neuromatch Academy: Teaching Computational Neuroscience with global accessibility” (Arxiv 2020)

In preparation:

  1. Athena Akrami*, Charles Kopec*, Carlos Brody, Investigating the efficacy of different inhibitory opsins in rat cortex (In Preparation).

  2. Athena Akrami, Alessandro Treves. “Ambiguous Patterns and Recent Experience; an Autoassociative Network Model” (In Preparation).

Published:

  1. Lisa McCorkell, Gina Assaf, Hannah Davis, Hannah Wei, Athena Akrami, “Patient-Led Research for COVID-19: Embedding Patients in the Long COVID Narrative” (PAIN Reports, in press, OSF preprints 2020)

  2. Nicholas Roy, Ji Hyun Bak, The International Brain Laboratory, Athena Akrami, Carlos Brody, Jonathan Pillow, “Extracting the dynamics of decision-making behavior over learning” (Neuron 2021, BioRxiv 2020)        

  3. Christine Constantinople, Alex Piet, Peter Bibawi, Athena Akrami, Charles Kopec, Carlos Brody, “Lateral orbitofrontal cortex promotes trial-by-trial learning of risky, but not spatial, biases”. (eLife, 2019 – BioRxov)

  4. Nickolas Roy, Ji Hyun Bak, Athena Akrami, Carlos Brody, Jonathan Pillow. “Efficient inference for time-varying behavior during learning”. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 31, (NeurIPS 2018)

  5. Athena Akrami, Charles Kopec, Mathew Diamond Carlos Brody. “Posterior parietal cortex represents sensory stimulus history and is necessary for its effects on behavior”. (Nature, 2018 - BioRxiv).

  6. Chunyu A. Duan*, Marino Pagan*, Charles D. Kopec, Alex Riordan, Athena Akrami, Jeffrey C. Erlich & Carlos D. Brody, ”A collicular circuit for flexible sensorimotor routing in the rat”. (BioRxiv 2018)

  7. Benjamin Scott*, Christine Constantinople*, Athena Akrami, Timothy Hanks, Carlos Brody and David Tank. “Fronto-parietal cortical circuits encode accumulated evidence with a diversity of timescales” (Neuron, 2017)

  8. Arash Fassihi, Athena Akrami, Vinzenz Schoenfelder, Francesca Pulecchi, Mathew Diamond. “Transformation of Perception from Sensory to Motor Cortex”. (Current Biology, 2017).

  9.  Ji Hyun Bak, Jung Yoon Choi, Athena Akrami, Witten Ilana, & Pillow Janathan. “Adaptive optimal training of animal behavior”, Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 29 (NIPS, 2016)

  10. Athena Akrami*, Natalia Grion*, Yangfang Zuo, Federico Stella, Mathew E. Diamond, “Coherence between rat sensorimotor system and hippocampus is enhanced during tactile discrimination” (PLoS Biology 2016, *equal co-first author)

  11. Athena Akrami*, Arash Fassihi*, Vahid Esmaeili, Mathew E. Diamond, “Tactile perception and working memory in rats and humans”, (PNAS 2014, *equal co-first author)

  12.  Arash Fassihi, Athena Akrami, Vahid Esmaeili, Fabrizio Manzino and Mathew E. Diamond, ”Sensation of a noisy whisker vibration in rats”, (Living Machines 2012, LNAI 7375 proceedings)

  13. Sara Ebrahimi Nasrabady, Anujaianthi Kuzhandaivel, Athena Akrami, Andrea Nistri. “An unusual increase in the lumbar network excitability of the rat spinal cord is evoked by the PARP-1 inhibitor PJ-34 through inhibition of glutamate uptake”, (Neuropharmacology, 2012)

  14. Athena Akrami, Eleonora Russo, Alessandro Treves, “Lateral thinking, from the Hopfield model to cortical dynamics”, (Brain Research, 2011)

  15. Athena Akrami, Pavel Itskov, Mathew E. Diamond, “Hippocampal population dynamics underlying memory trace activation in a tactile classification task”, (BMC Neuroscience, 2011)

  16. Athena Akrami, Alessandro Treves, “Neural basis of perceptual expectations: insights from transient dynamics of attractor neural networks”, (BMC Neuroscience, 2009)

  17. Athena Akrami, Yan Liu, Alessandro Treves and Bharathi Jagadeesh, “Converging neuronal activity in inferior temporal cortex during the classification of ‘morphed’ stimuli”, (Cerebral Cortex, 2009)

  18. Athena Akrami, Soroosh Solhjoo, Ali M. Nasrabadi, "EEG-Based Mental Task Classification: Linear & Nonlinear Classification of Movement Imagery," 27th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS), September 1-4, 2005, Shanghai, China 

Invited Talks

  1. Department of Neuroscience, Psychology & Behaviour, University of Leicester, February 2021 (Zoom)

  2.  Department of Psychology, Columbia University, February 2021 (Zoom)

  3.  SfN Global Connectome, January 2021 (Zoom)

  4. Centre for Neuroscience Studies, Queen’s University, January 2021 (Zoom)

  5. Center for Brain Sciences, Harvard University, December 2020 (Zoom)

  6. Center for Systems Neuroscience, Boston University, December 2020 (Zoom)

  7.   “Vision in Context” Online Symposium, September 2020 (Zoom)

  8. The Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience (ICN), University College London (UCL), London, UK, February 2020

  9. Cognition and Brain Science Unit (CBU), University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK, November 2019

  10. Centre for Neurotechnology, Imperial College, London, UK, October 2019

  11. UK Neural Computation meeting, Nottingham, UK, July 2019

  12. Neural Dynamics programme, Bristol University, Bristol, UK, May 2019

  13. Cortex Club, Oxford University, Oxford, UK, April 2019 

  14. Swiss Society of Neuroscience, Geneva, Switzerland, February 2019

  15.  Institute of Neuroscience, Oregon University, January 2018

  16. SPiNES seminars, The Neuroscience Institute, NYU, December 2017

  17. Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, UCL, London, UK, November 2017

  18. Sloan Swartz Meeting for Computational Neuroscience, Caltech, August 2016

  19. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Columbia University, July 2016

  20. Simons Collaboration on Global Brain, Simons Foundation, June 2016

  21. Center for theoretical Neuroscience, Columbia University, May 2016

  22. Institut D’Investigacions Biomediques August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS), June 2015, Barcelona, Spain

  23. Institut de Fisica Corpuscular (IFIC), University of Valencia, June 2015, Valencia, Spain

  24. CiMeC (Center for Mind/Brain Sciences), University of Trento, May 2015, Trento, Italy

  25. School of Psychology – University of Padova, May 2015, Padova, Italy

  26. School for Cognitive Science, IPM, May 2015, Tehran, Iran.

  27. Posterior Parietal and Prefrontal cortex involvement in a rat auditory parametric working memory task, Workshop on “Working memory, data and models – bridging the gap”, SISSA, May 2015, Trieste, Italy.

  28. EEG-based Brain-Computer Interface system for mental task classification, Frankfort Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS), Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, August 2005, Frankfort, Germany

Oral Presentations in International Meetings

  1. Timescales of neuronal sensory representation in decision making and working memory tasks, Computational Neuroscience Meeting (CNS) 2019, Barcelona, Spain, July 2019

  2. Parametric Working Memory and its multiple timescales, Cosyne 2018 Workshop, March 2018, Denver, USA

  3. Posterior Parietal Cortex conveys sensory history that acts as a prior during a parametric WM task, Cosyne 2017, February 2017, Salt Lake City, USA

  4. Context dependent working memory, Cosyne 2016 Workshop, March 2016, Salt Lake City, USA

  5. Auditory and tactile working memory in rat and human: Prior competes with recent evidence, Cosyne 2013 Workshop, February 2013, Salt Lake City, USA

  6. Whisker-mediated vibration perception in rats: psychophysics and neurometrics. Italian Society of Physics, l’Aquila, Italy, September 2011 

  7. Attractor dynamics in the visual domain (Long Term Memory, Adaptation Aftereffects, and Priming), Spring Hippocampal Research Conference, June 2009, Verona, Italy

  8. Dynamics of neural response in IT cortex during categorical processing of natural images, Society for Neuroscience meeting (SfN), October 2006, Atlanta, USA

  9. Categorical processing of continuously morphed natural images in inferotemporal cortex, Computational Neuroscience Conference (CNS), July 2006, Edinburgh, UK 

 

Leadership, Organizational activities

2021                        Neuromatch Academy 2021, Board Member

2020-present      Patient-Led Research for COVID19, Founding Member

WIREs Cognitive Science (Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews), Editor

UCL neuro-AI committee, Core Member 

2020                        Neuromatch Academy 2020, Executive Committee Member 

2018-present      Computational and Systems Neuroscience (COSYNE) meeting, Program Committee Member            

2016                        Timescales of dynamics in neural networks. Organizers: Athena Akrami, Ahmed El Hady, Cosyne 2016 Workshop

2013                        Furry statisticians – how rodents infer the meaningful properties of unreliable environments. Organizers: Athena Akrami, Mathew Diamond, Cosyne 2013 Workshop

 

Reviewing Experiences

·            Reviewing for several journals including Nature, Science, Nature Communication, Cell, Neuron, Current Biology, Scientific Reports, Psychological Review, Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, PLoS Comp. Biol., J. Neuro. Phys., Frontiers in Neural Circuits., Frontiers in Psychology, Proc. of the Royal Society B., PLoS One.

·            Guest editor for PLoS Computational Biology.

·            Member of the editorial board for Frontiers in Neural Circuits, and Frontiers in Psychology

·            Member of the Program Committee for Cosyne 2020

·            Reviewing for several conferences including Cosyne (2015-present), CNS (2007-present), ECMS (2013), SIMULTECH 2014/2015, BioCAS 2015

Current collaborators: 

1.     Thomas Mrsic-Flogel, Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, UCL, London, UK

2.     Sonja Hofer, Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, UCL, London, UK

3.     Maneesh Sahani, Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, London, UK

4.     Peter Latham, Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unite, London, UK

5.     Claudia Clopath, Imperial College, London, UK

6.     Benjamin Scott, Boston University, Boston, USA

7.     Bing Wen Brunton, University of Washington, Seattle, USA

  

Knowledge Transfer 

Neuromatch Academy 2020, Executive Committee Member. Global online school in Computational Neuroscience, training >9,000 students

Patient-Led Research for COVID19 (2020-present), Founding Member. Open access research on Long COVID, several talks and interview for the public 

In2ScienceUK and Nuffield Research Placements (2018-present), Hosting PI for underrepresented students

 

Educational Awards and Recognitions

May 2011: Young Scientist Award (eighteen thousand Euro), SISSA, Italy.

June 2011: OCNS grant for the meeting CNS2011, Stockholm, Sweden.

Summer 2007: IBRO grant for the meeting IBRO2007, Melbourne, Australia.

2005-2009: Full scholarship award of SISSA

Winter 2005: First rank in entrance exam of Cognitive Neuroscience, SISSA 

Spring 2004: Accepted to the Master Program for fall 2004 in the Department of Biomedical Engineering in Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), Entrance Exam waived as an award for the "Best Student of the Country", 

Winter 2004: Selected as the "Best Student of the Country" (One of the 3 Best Engineering Students of the Country), by the Iran Ministry of Sciences, Researches and Technology, Year 2003, 

2002, 03, 04: Rank 2nd in the Department of Biomedical Engineering of Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), with average score 18.04 (out of 20), 

September 2002: Recognized as the honored student in Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic) and offered to continue my study in the second major (Control Engineering), 

March 1998: Accepted in the country level of the Chemical and Physics Olympiads, 

Fall 1993: Entering the NODET (National Organization for Development of Exceptional Talents),