Najafi Laboratory

Funding

• 2025-2027: Whitehall Foundation

• 2025: Scialog (RCSA: Research Corporation for Science Advancement)

• 2025: Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI)

Press

• 2025: From Molecules to Mind: Farzaneh Najafi Receives Multiple Awards for Cognitive Research | Neuro Next Initiative

• 2023: Dr. Farzaneh Najafi — Stories of WiN

Lab News (scroll down for Lab photos!)

Apr 2025:

• Our multi-lab collaborative review on predictive processing is published on arXiv:
  Neural mechanisms of predictive processing: a collaborative community experiment through the OpenScope program

Jan 2025:

• Our lab's YouTube channel is launched. We will publish Sybeco talks there.

• My collaborative work with Hannah Choi and her student Aish Balwani is now published on bioRxiv:
  Constructing Biologically Constrained RNNs via Dale's Backprop and Topologically-Informed Pruning

Dec 2024:

• Our lab receives the Whitehall Foundation Award! I am thankful and proud of my lab members for providing awesome data, so we can get these grants!

• Our paper with Simone Russo and Garrett Stanley is accepted in Scientific Reports:
  Spike reliability is cell type specific and shapes excitation and inhibition in the cortex

• Farzaneh is selected as an HHMI Freeman Hrabowski Scholar Finalist. This is quite an honor!

• We receive two Scialog Awards on Molecular Basis of Cognition: One award is with Anita Disney (Duke), and Ritchie Chen (UCSF). Another award is with Longzhi Tan (Stanford), and Masashi Tabuchi (Case Western).
  Scialog: Molecular Basis of Cognition Ends with Awards to 6 Teams

• Our work with Jerome and Simone is accepted in iScience: Unexpected events modulate context signaling in VIP and excitatory cells of the visual cortex | bioRxiv

Oct 2024:

• Farzaneh receives a new award: Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Collaboration Supplement Awards, together with Luke Mortensen (UGA)!

• Our 2 PhD studnets: Yicong Huang & Sana Aminnaji are selected as GT/Emory CNTP scholars (Computational Neural Engineering Training Program)

Sep 2024:

• Excited to have multiple new lab members: Sana Aminnaji as a PhD student & Sophie Medico as a research technician, also multiple UG and Master's students!

• Our master's student: Esha Choudhary, recieves GRA from the Bioinformatics Masters Program.

Mar 2024:

• Farzaneh is selected as a Scialog Fellow, Molecular Basis of Cognition. 

Feb 2024:

• Farzaneh receives her first award as a PI: Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Collaborative Pairs, together with Giulio Tononi (UW, Madison)!

Jan 2024:

• We are excited to have Laurence Copeland join our lab as a research technician!

• Our master's student: Hosala Patil, recieves GRA from the Bioinformatics Masters Program.

Nov 2023:

• We had our very first successful two-photon imaging experiment today!! 

Sep 2023:

• Yicong Huang joins the lab as our first PhD student!

July 2023:

• Farzaneh's interview with WiN (Women in Neuroscience) podcast is published here. Could be insightful for your career planning!

May 2023: 

• Our lab renovations are over! So excited about our new, beautiful lab space!

• Tim Stamm (ECE) joins our lab to lead the engineering projects. Multiple new undergrads (ME, EE, CE, Neuro, Bio) join our lab to help with our ongoing projects. 

Apr 2023: 

• Vanshika did her first practice surgery! She is doing a great job with ordering supplies and equipment for our lab.

Feb 2023:

• Farzaneh launches Sybeco: a virtual journal club dedicated to systems, behavioral, and computational neuroscience. This unique platform features students and postdocs presenting their recent publications.

Jan 2023: 

• I started my role as a PI :) , together with my research tech, Vanshika, and an undergrad, Reagan!