Principal Investigator
Ideator, Creator, and Supreme Ruler of the MontiLab
A word of warning from PhD Comics
Our Team
Daniel Toker, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow
Lord of Chaos
Characterizing information flow through large-scale brain circuits, and how that information flow is disrupted during unconscious states like generalized seizures and anesthesia.
Zoe Lee, M.A., 6th year PhD Student
The structure and measurement of phenomenal consciousness using computational tools and neural network models.
Amber Hopkins, M.A., 5th year PhD Student
Countess of Consciousness
Combining non-invasive brain stimulation techniques, including TUS and TMS, with neuroimgaing methods, including MRI and EEG, to investigate how subcortical and cortical structures interact to support consciousness.
Sonya Ashikyan, M.A., 4th year PhD Student
Queen of Cognition
Creating diagnostic and prognostic tools through machine learning modeling for multimodal neuroimaging and neuropsychological datasets. To do so, we focus on traumatic brain injury patients across all levels of severity, from mild to severe.
Thomas McGee, M.A., 4th year PhD Student
Prince of Language Processing
Investigating the representation of syntax in biological and artificial minds. Current/recent projects investigate the penetrability of syntactic representations to world knowledge in LLMs; pragmatic inferences in vision-language transformers; and stimulation of brain regions to study how they support syntax and word meaning.
Jojo Widi, 1st year PhD Student
Pharaoh of Phenomenology
Using neuroimaging, non-invasive brain stimulation, and behavioral techniques to understand our conscious experience. Questions include: how does it come about? What are we capable of saying about it, and how accurate are those reports? Most importantly – what exactly is it?
Former Lab Members
| Name | Position | Institution |
| Norman Spivak, Ph.D. | 3rd year Medical Student | UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine |
| Alessandra Dallavecchia, Ph.D. | Post-Doctoral Fellow | UCLA’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior |
| Giacomo Bertazzoli, Ph.D. | Post-Doctoral Fellow | Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital |
| Micah Johnson, Ph.D. | Post-Doctoral Fellow | Johns Hopkins University |
| Evan S. Lutkenhoff, Ph.D. | Principal Scientist | Magnus Medical |
| Marina Weiler, Ph.D. | Assistant Professor | University of Virginia |
| Federico Micheli, M.S. | PhD Student | University of Sussex |
| Jeff Chiang, Ph.D. | Assistant Professor | UCLA’s Department of Neurosurgery |
| John Coetzee, Ph.D. | Research Scientist | Stanford University, Veteran Affairs Polytrauma |
| Julia Sophia Crone, Ph.D. | Principal Investigator | University of Vienna |
| Amy Zheng, Ph.D. | Research Scientist | Casa Colina Research Institute |
| John Dell’Italia, Ph.D. | Data Scientist | Birmingham Veteran Affairs Medical Center |
| Josh Cain, Ph.D. | Founder | Symphony Neurotech |
| Joel Frohlich, Ph.D |
Post-Doctoral Fellow | University of Tübingen |
| Branden Bio, Ph.D. | Research Scientist | U.S. Naval Research Laboratory’s Human and Machine Intelligence Section |