Roozbeh Kiani
Roozbeh Kiani | |
|---|---|
| Born | |
| Alma mater | University of Washington Stanford |
| Awards |
|
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Neuroscience Cognitive psychology |
| Institutions | NYU |
| Thesis | Bounded accumulation of evidence in parietal cortex: A flexible neural mechanism for making decisions and estimating certainty (2009) |
| Doctoral advisor | Michael Shadlen |
| Other academic advisors | William Newsome Hossein Esteky Keiji Tanaka |
| Website | https://as.nyu.edu/faculty/roozbeh-kiani.html |
Roozbeh Kiani is an Iranian-American neuroscientist whose research focuses on how the brain makes decisions under uncertainty. He is a professor of Neural Science and Psychology at New York University (NYU), where he directs the Perceptual and Mnemonic Decision-Making Lab at the Center for Neural Science. Kiani's work has investigated how the brain integrates evidence over time, encodes decision confidence, and flexibly adapts decision-making strategies to changing contexts.
Early life and education
Kiani was born and raised in Amol, Iran. He was awarded the top gold medal at the 27th International Chemistry Olympiad[1] in Beijing, China. After completing high school, Kiani pursued medicine at Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in Tehran, while cultivating his interests in the neural basis of vision and cognition.[2] He moved to the United States and joined the University of Washington, where he earned a Ph.D. under the mentorship of Michael Shadlen.[3] Following his Ph.D., Kiani conducted postdoctoral research with William T. Newsome at Stanford University, further developing neurophysiological and behavioral paradigms to probe decision-making circuits in primates [4][5][6]
Academic career and research
Kiani joined the faculty at New York University in 2013 and is currently a professor in the Center for Neural Science, with an affiliated appointment with the Department of Psychology.[7] His research explores how the brain accumulates information, estimates uncertainty, and makes decisions that are both flexible and robust in the face of environmental change. Kiani's work integrates electrophysiology, neurostimulation, psychophysics, and computational modeling.
His work on decision confidence has shown how cortical neurons encode internal estimates of choice reliability and use them to guide subsequent behavior.[8] His studies of confidence-dependent hierarchical decision making [9] have shown multiscale integration processes that interact to shape behavior and have revealed how contextual cues dynamically reshape population-level neural representations.[10] Kiani has contributed to the development of causal perturbation methods to control neural population activity to shape behavior.[11] Earlier in his career, he studied object recognition, demonstrating that neurons in inferotemporal (IT) cortex represent object categories.[12]
Since 2024, Kiani co-directs the Methods in Computational Neuroscience course at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole.
From 2020 to 2025, Kiani was a member of the Board of Scientific Counselors at the National Eye Institute.[13]
Awards
- 1995, Gold Medal and Top Score, 27th International Chemistry Olympiad [1]
- 2010, Donald B. Lindsley Prize in Behavioral Neuroscience[14]
- 2014, Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship[15]
- 2016, McKnight Scholar Award[16]
- 2016, Pew Scholar in Biomedical Sciences[17]
- 2022, Troland Research Award, National Academy of Sciences[18]
- 2023, Pew Innovation Fund Award (2023)[7]
Personal life
Kiani advocates for academic freedom and human rights, and has contributed to conversations around global science and political risk.[2]
References
- ^ a b "IChO Results". www.icho-official.org. Archived from the original on 2025-07-25. Retrieved 2025-10-22.
- ^ a b "Growing Up in Science, Roozbeh Kiani". growingupinscience.github.io. 2022. Retrieved 2025-10-23.
- ^ Kiani, Roozbeh (2009). Bounded accumulation of evidence in parietal cortex: A flexible neural mechanism for making decisions and estimating certainty (PhD thesis). University of Washington.
- ^ Kiani, Roozbeh; Cueva, Christopher J.; Reppas, John B.; Newsome, William T. (2014-07-07). "Dynamics of Neural Population Responses in Prefrontal Cortex Indicate Changes of Mind on Single Trials". Current Biology. 24 (13): 1542–1547. Bibcode:2014CBio...24.1542K. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2014.05.049. ISSN 0960-9822. PMC 4191655. PMID 24954050.
- ^ Kiani, Roozbeh; Cueva, Christopher J.; Reppas, John B.; Peixoto, Diogo; Ryu, Stephen I.; Newsome, William T. (2015-03-18). "Natural Grouping of Neural Responses Reveals Spatially Segregated Clusters in Prearcuate Cortex". Neuron. 85 (6): 1359–1373. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2015.02.014. ISSN 0896-6273. PMC 4366683. PMID 25728571.
- ^ Peixoto, Diogo; Verhein, Jessica R.; Kiani, Roozbeh; Kao, Jonathan C.; Nuyujukian, Paul; Chandrasekaran, Chandramouli; Brown, Julian; Fong, Sania; Ryu, Stephen I.; Shenoy, Krishna V.; Newsome, William T. (2021). "Decoding and perturbing decision states in real time". Nature. 591 (7851): 604–609. Bibcode:2021Natur.591..604P. doi:10.1038/s41586-020-03181-9. ISSN 1476-4687. PMID 33473215.
- ^ a b "Roozbeh Kiani, NYU". as.nyu.edu. Retrieved 2025-10-23.
- ^ Kiani, Roozbeh; Shadlen, Michael N. (2009-05-08). "Representation of Confidence Associated with a Decision by Neurons in the Parietal Cortex". Science. 324 (5928): 759–764. Bibcode:2009Sci...324..759K. doi:10.1126/science.1169405. ISSN 0036-8075. PMC 2738936. PMID 19423820.
- ^ Purcell, Braden A.; Kiani, Roozbeh (2016-08-02). "Hierarchical decision processes that operate over distinct timescales underlie choice and changes in strategy". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 113 (31): E4531–E4540. Bibcode:2016PNAS..113E4531P. doi:10.1073/pnas.1524685113. PMC 4978308. PMID 27432960.
- ^ Okazawa, Gouki; Hatch, Christina E.; Mancoo, Allan; Machens, Christian K.; Kiani, Roozbeh (2021-07-08). "Representational geometry of perceptual decisions in the monkey parietal cortex". Cell. 184 (14): 3748–3761.e18. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.05.022. ISSN 0092-8674. PMC 8273140. PMID 34171308.
- ^ Nejatbakhsh, Amin; Fumarola, Francesco; Esteki, Saleh; Toyoizumi, Taro; Kiani, Roozbeh; Mazzucato, Luca (2024). "Predicting the effect of micro-stimulation on macaque prefrontal activity based on spontaneous circuit dynamics". Physical Review Research. 5 (4) 043211. doi:10.1103/physrevresearch.5.043211. ISSN 2643-1564. PMC 11636805. PMID 39669288.
- ^ Kiani, Roozbeh; Esteky, Hossein; Mirpour, Koorosh; Tanaka, Keiji (2007). "Object Category Structure in Response Patterns of Neuronal Population in Monkey Inferior Temporal Cortex". Journal of Neurophysiology. 97 (6): 4296–4309. doi:10.1152/jn.00024.2007. ISSN 0022-3077. PMID 17428910.
- ^ "Board of Scientific Counselors Permanent Members | National Eye Institute". www.nei.nih.gov. Retrieved 2025-10-23.
- ^ "Past Lindsley Prize Winners – The Grass Foundation". Retrieved 2025-10-23.
- ^ "Fellows Database | Alfred P. Sloan Foundation". sloan.org. Retrieved 2025-10-23.
- ^ "Awardees". McKnight Foundation. Retrieved 2025-10-23.
- ^ "Roozbeh Kiani, M.D., Ph.D." pew.org. Retrieved 2025-10-23.
- ^ "Troland Research Award". National Academy of Sciences. Retrieved 2025-10-23.
External links
- Kiani Lab, NYU's Center for Neural Science