Faculty

Biography

Ralf joined the University of Rochester in 2014 and currently is Assistant Professor of Brain & Cognitive Sciences and Physics & Astronomy. Previously, he was a Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School and the Swartz Fellow in the Sloan-Swartz Center for Theoretical Neurobiology at Brandeis University.  He earned his PhD from Oxford University in 1999.

Research Overview

My primary scientific interest lies in understanding how the brain forms percepts and how it uses them to make decisions, especially in the visual domain. In particular, I am interested in how the brain's perceptual beliefs about the outside world are represented by the responses of populations of cortical neurons. To that end I use tools from machine learning to construct mathematical models that aim to explain neural responses and behavior.

Research Interests

• computational neuroscience