Biography

I am currently a PhD candidate in the Biological Sciences Program at UCSD, where I am fortunate to work with Prof. Marcus Benna and Prof. Kay Tye. I received my MSc in Systems Biology at Maastricht University. I completed my master thesis on computational neuroscience working in the lab of Stefano Fusi at Columbia University.

My research is on how populations of neurons encode information within ethological contexts. Specifically, I am interested in how changes within an animal’s internal state lead to changes within its neural representations and how these representations evolve over time. For instance, how chronic mild stress can induce depression.

News

• [Jul. 2023] I advanced to PhD candidacy.

Publications [Google Scholar]

1. bioRxiv

   Amygdalostriatal transition zone neurons encode sustained valence to direct conditioned behaviors

   Fergil Mills, Christopher R Lee, James R Howe, Hao Li, Shan Shao, Maria N Keisler, Mackenzie E Lemieux, Felix H Taschbach, Laurel R Keyes, Matilde R Borio, Hannah S Chen, Reesha R Patel, Alexa L Gross, Jeremy Delahanty, Christian Cazares, Liezl Maree, Romy Wichmann, Talmo D Pereira, Marcus K Benna, Cory M Root, Kay M Tye

   bioRxiv

   PDF BibTex


2. Nature

   Cortical ensembles orchestrate social competition through hypothalamic outputs

   Nancy Padilla-Coreano, Kanha Batra, Makenzie Patarino, Zexin Chen, Rachel R Rock, Ruihan Zhang, Sébastien B Hausmann, Javier C Weddington, Reesha Patel, Yu E Zhang, Hao-Shu Fang, Srishti Mishra, Deryn O LeDuke, Jasmin Revanna, Hao Li, Matilde Borio, Rachelle Pamintuan, Aneesh Bal, Laurel R Keyes, Avraham Libster, Romy Wichmann, Fergil Mills, Felix H Taschbach, Gillian A Matthews, James P Curley, Ila R Fiete, Cewu Lu, Kay M Tye

   Nature

   PDF BibTex

Teaching

• Teaching Assistant, Python for Biologists at University of California San Diego, Winter 2023 (upcoming)
• Teaching Assistant, Computational Neuroscience at Neuromatch Academy, Summer 2022
• Graduate Instruction Assistant, Bioinformatics Laboratory at University of California San Diego, Spring 2022
• Graduate Instruction Assistant, Computational Models of the Brain at University of California San Diego, Spring 2021
• Teaching Assistant, Imperative Programming at Maastricht University, Spring 2017
• Teaching Assistant, Introduction to Programming at Maastricht University, Fall 2016

Conferences

Functional characterization of input-defined neurons within the primary motor cortex during motor learning.

• Society for Neuroscience (SfN), 2022.

Abstract representations of space in the mouse dentate gyrus.

• Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience (CCN), 2019.