The Department of Neurobiology welcomes new faculty Mario Dipoppa, Ph.D. as an Assistant Professor effective February 1, 2023.
Dr. Dipoppa received his B.Sc. in Physics in 2006 from the Università di Roma I La Sapienza in Italy. In 2008, he received his M.Sc. theoretical physics from the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon in France. His Ph.D. was in theoretical neuroscience from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in France. From 2013-2018, Dr. Dipoppa was a postdoctoral fellow working on integrating experimental and theoretical approaches with Ken Harris and Matteo Carandini. In 2018, he joined Ken Miller’s Laboratory at Columbia University in the Center for Theoretical Neuroscience as an Associate Research Scientist.
Dr. Dipoppa’s research interest is to understand the mechanisms underlying neural computations in the cerebral cortex. He has extensive experience developing computational models of the mammalian cortex and leverages machine learning algorithms to analyze large-scale neural data. He has been focused on understanding the function of cortical cells in the visual cortex namely, how neural circuits implement computations that have potential long-term applications for understanding neurological disorders. Most recently, Dr. Dipoppa, using machine learning decoding methods he developed, demonstrated the relationship between vision and behavior by showing that the geometry of neural representations of visual stimuli were altered by locomotion.
Please join us in welcoming Dr. Dipoppa to the faculty.