List of Computational Neuroscience Programs?

[gchun]

Hello, I'm trying to come up with a list of computational neuroscience phd programs. I may also be interested in bioinformatics/neuroscience but ONLY if there is a concentration in neuroimaging-related research, I'm not really into cell biology or genetics and all that jazz. Here's what I have so far, but does anyone know of any other (US-only) programs that are not Ivy League or highly competitive? I'm planning to just send out like <10 applications mostly to not-ivy-league/cali programs.

Probably not-reach Programs?: Boston University, Chicago, New York University, Washington State, Wisconsin Milwaukee, Brandeis, Texas Austin, Minnesota, Houston

Probably Reach Programs?: Carnegie Mellon, Princeton, Caltech, Southern California, Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, Washington, San Francisco, Emory, Pennsylvania, Columbia, San Diego, Harvard, Los Angeles, Stanford, Yale

Correct me if I'm wrong on any of this? I think it'd be great to have a list for comp neuro somewhere on this website... unless it's already here somewhere and I can't find it? Thanks for any help!!

Edited April 7, 2018 by gchun
formatting

[brainlass]

To be honest, it sounds to me like you're looking for cognitive neuroscience (often housed under psychology departments) programs with professors who use computational methods. You expressed a particular interest in neuroimaging; you won't get that at all if you go a comp sci route. A dedicated, standalone "computational neuroscience" department is rare or nonexistent, I think. I would also check out cognitive science programs.

[eevee]

Just a note, I would warn against having at least NYU and UChicago on your 'probably not reach' list -- both are pretty competitive; just from personal experience this year I got into UCLA, Washington, and Cornell but was post-interview rejected from NYU. 

Overall, I agree with brainlass -- Most neuroscience programs won't have a separate computational thing; it'll depend on the lab you're in. You should look into cognitive programs, as they tend to use more computational methods than, for example, mol/cell or systems-focused programs. I noticed Duke isn't on your list, but it should be! I'm finishing up undergrad there and their Cognitive Neuroscience program has a lot of labs doing computational stuff. You may also want to look into UC Irvine. (Unfortunately both of my suggestions are pretty competitive sorry about that!!)

[brainlass]

4 hours ago, eevee said:

Just a note, I would warn against having at least NYU and UChicago on your 'probably not reach' list -- both are pretty competitive; just from personal experience this year I got into UCLA, Washington, and Cornell but was post-interview rejected from NYU. 

Overall, I agree with brainlass -- Most neuroscience programs won't have a separate computational thing; it'll depend on the lab you're in. You should look into cognitive programs, as they tend to use more computational methods than, for example, mol/cell or systems-focused programs. I noticed Duke isn't on your list, but it should be! I'm finishing up undergrad there and their Cognitive Neuroscience program has a lot of labs doing computational stuff. You may also want to look into UC Irvine. (Unfortunately both of my suggestions are pretty competitive sorry about that!!)

Seconding the suggestions that NYU and U Chicago should probably belong on the "reach" list, just because they're pretty competitive for this field. Same goes for UT Austin. Also, while this is obviously in the "reach" category, Princeton is an excellent place for computational neuro these days.

Personally, I just accepted my offer at Duke for cognitive neuro, and they definitely seemed to have a solid representation of computational methods as well!

Edited April 10, 2018 by brainlass

[Logic]

On 4/7/2018 at 1:17 PM, gchun said:

Hello, I'm trying to come up with a list of computational neuroscience phd programs. I may also be interested in bioinformatics/neuroscience but ONLY if there is a concentration in neuroimaging-related research, I'm not really into cell biology or genetics and all that jazz. Here's what I have so far, but does anyone know of any other (US-only) programs that are not Ivy League or highly competitive? I'm planning to just send out like <10 applications mostly to not-ivy-league/cali programs.

Probably not-reach Programs?: Boston University, Chicago, New York University, Washington State, Wisconsin Milwaukee, Brandeis, Texas Austin, Minnesota, Houston

Probably Reach Programs?: Carnegie Mellon, Princeton, Caltech, Southern California, Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, Washington, San Francisco, Emory, Pennsylvania, Columbia, San Diego, Harvard, Los Angeles, Stanford, Yale

Correct me if I'm wrong on any of this? I think it'd be great to have a list for comp neuro somewhere on this website... unless it's already here somewhere and I can't find it? Thanks for any help!!

I know I'm responding to this super late, but here's a really helpful list of comp neuro programs: https://github.com/eselkin/awesome-computational-neuroscience

[AnonNeuroGrad]

A few of those programs are harder than you think to get into and I would probably move them into Reach programs namely NYU and Chicago possibly also BU (I might be biased but my interview cohort there were also interviewing at places like NYU, Northwestern, MIT, etc.). I think it doesn't have as prestigious of a reputation but it draws some of the same caliber of applicants as those applying to the two big name Boston schools (MIT and Harvard) who use it as their "back-up"; a lot of the people I met decided to go to places like UCSD, UCSF, Yale, Karolinska, etc but nevertheless you'd have to compete against them for a spot at the interview. We had >500 applicants, 40 interviewees (2 international), and 9 were in the cohort (2, like me, were swung into a different neuro program).

USC should not be reach imo. If you're looking at computational neuro, you should remove WSU and Yale.

You didn't ask but here's a list of schools I made for myself when applying. There's a lot of systems neuro mixed in here.

I hate lists because it is so much more nuanced than that. I focused my applications based on particular papers and research collaborations that stood out to me (which is what you should do as well). I'm about to tell you a list (in no particular order) of places that do great work in comp. neuro. but this shouldn't be taken as comprehensive and know that I am biased by groups doing systems work as well in what's called "latent space inference" or "manifold learning" in the United States. Look at who is presenting at Cosyne/CNS/CCN for a good idea of comp. neuro. I don't really make a distinction between many computational and systems neuro since they're so tightly integrated. Adam Calhoun has a great blog post on this and the network graph shows you the current who's whom of the field and their main collaborators. I've starred the "top five schools" imo. I'm intentionally making a long-list so that you can decide who are the top ones in your desired subfield. If I didn't give PIs, it's because I'm lazy. Here's my top ten list

• Stanford* (Surya Ganguli, Krishna Shenoy, Dan Yamins, Scott Linderman, EJ Chichilnisky, Google guys like David Sussillo and Jon Shlens)

• Princeton* (Jonathan Pillow, William Bialek, Carlos Brody, David Tank, Sebastian Seung)

• NYU (Wei Ji Ma, Xiao-Jing Wang, Dmitri Chklovskii, Eero Simoncelli, Dora Angelaki)

• Columbia* (John P. Cunningham, Mark Churchland, Liam Paninski, Stefano Fusi, Ken Miller, Randy Bruno, Niko Kriegskorte, Larry Abbott)

• MIT (Mehrdad Jazayeri, James DiCarlo, Joshua Tenenbaum, Michale Fee, Mriganka Sur, Mark Bear, Haim Sompolinsky [half-time in Haifa, Israel])

• Washington University in St. Louis (James Fitzpatrick, Adam Kepecs, Ilya Monosov, Camillo Padoa-Schioppa, Lawrence Snyder, Geoffrey Goodhill, Keith Hengen)

• University of Washington (Adrienne Fairhall, Rajesh Rao, Eric Shea-Brown, [many Allen Institute scientists])

• UC Berkeley (Hillel Adesnik, Jack Gallant, Bruno Olshausen, Fritz Sommer, Linda Wilbrecht)

• Carnegie Mellon/Pittsburgh* (CNBC) (Brent Doiron, Rob Kass, Bard Ermentrout, Byron Yu)

• University of Chicago (John Maunsell, Jack Cowan, David Freedman)

 

And an extended list including many systems people

• UC San Diego (Tatyana Sharpee, Terry Sejnowski, Thomas Albright, Bradley Voytek)

• Harvard University (Sam Gershman, Chris Harvey, Cengiz Pehlevan, Mackenzie Mathis, many others)

• Caltech (Markus Meister, Doris Tsao)

• Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown (Christian Machens, Zach Mainen, Leopoldo Petreanu)

• UCLA (Jonathan Kao, Dario Ringach, Josh Trachtenberg)

• UCSF (Massimo Scanziani, Vikas Sohaal)

• ETH Zurich (Ben Grewe, Valerio Mante)

• UCL* (Gatsby Unit and Sainsbury-Wellcome) (Matteo Carandini, Ken Harris, Maneesh Sahani)

• Oxford (Tim Behrens, Tim Vogels, Adam Packer)

• HHMI/Johns Hopkins (Janelia Farm) (Marius Pachitariu, Vivek Jayaraman, Davi Bock, Karel Svoboda, Reza Shadmehr)

• Cold Spring Harbor Labs (shared students with SUNY Stony Brook sometimes) (Anne Churchland, Anthony Zador, Tatiana Engel, Adam Kepecs)

• Boston University (Chandramouli Chandrasekaran, Ben Scott, Nancy Kopell, Mark Kramer, Uri Eden)

• Toronto (Joel Zylberberg [affiliated through York])

• Penn (Diego Contreras, Josh Gold, Konrad Kording)

• University of Rochester (Adam Snyder, Thomas Howard, Greg DeAngelis)

• Baylor (Andreas Tolias, Jacob Reimer)

• Northwestern (Daniel Dombeck, Andrew Miri, Sara Solla)

• Brandeis (Eve Marder, Gina Turrigiano)

• Brown (Jerome Sanes, David Sheinberg, Wilson Truccolo)

• UT Austin (Alex Huk, Dana Ballard)

• Tons of Germans that I have no idea what universities they are at

• EPFL

 

An extended extended list of places that still do this work and are up-and-coming or may be more systems oriented or I know less about but are worth applying to

• Georgia Tech (Chethan Padarinath, Eva Dyer, Chris Rozell)

• University of Oregon (Cris Niell, David McCormick, Yashar Ahmadian, Luca Mazzucato)

• SUNY Stony Brook (shares with CSHL) (Memming Park, Giancarlo La Camera, Alfredo Fontanini, Braden Brinkman)

• UC Davis

• University of Southern California

• Duke

• UNC Chapel Hill

• Yale

• UT Houston

• Rice

• UCSB