Philip Shamash

Philip Shamash is a PhD student in the Branco lab. He studies how the brain uses representations of the external environment to select useful actions.

The mammalian forebrain is known to build and store internal models of the outside world. However, we lack a verified theory of how these models function - that is, how they interact with action centres in order to achieve a current goal. Philip addresses this problem by investigating the computation of escape strategies in mice.

Philip received a B.S. in neuroscience from UCLA. He then went on to work as a research assistant in the Axel lab at Columbia University, studying the cortical circuits underlying associative learning and working memory.