Staff Directory

Vikram Gadagkar is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Freeman Hrabowski Scholar and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neuroscience and the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University. Vikram received his BS in physics, chemistry, and mathematics from Bangalore University, MS in physics (working with Prof. Ajay Sood) from the Indian Institute of Science, and PhD in physics (working with Prof. Séamus Davis) from Cornell University. He then received his postdoctoral training with Prof. Jesse Goldberg at the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, Cornell University.

Major Awards and Fellowships

• Howard Hughes Medical Institute Freeman Hrabowski Scholar
• Society for Social Neuroscience Early Career Award
• Brain Research Foundation Seed Grant
• Sloan Research Fellowship
• Grossman-Kavli Scholar Award
• Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship Award
• McKnight Scholar Award
• Konishi Neuroethology Research Award
• NIH Director's New Innovator Award
• Searle Scholar Award
• Peter and Patricia Gruber International Research Award
• K99/R00 NIH/NINDS Pathway to Independence Award
• Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain Postdoctoral Fellowship

For Vikram's complete CV, please click on the link to the right.

Nathan Nadler is a graduate student in the Neurobiology and Behavior PhD program. In 2022 he graduated from Case Western Reserve University with a degree in Biology. He worked with Peter Scacheri for his undergraduate thesis studying epigenetic factors of cancer. Nathan integrated a novel CHIP-Seq normalization technique into the lab's datasets, discovering that different forms of cancer have an epigenetic signature. During his time in the Gadagkar lab, he hopes to study how zebra finches’ learning algorithm incorporates dopamine during development.

Logan is interested in how brain circuits enable complex computations and behavior. After earning dual degrees in Mathematics and Physics from Northeastern University in 2015, he worked as a software engineer developing audio signal processing algorithms, then as an engineer at the lab of Wei-Chung Allen Lee at Harvard Medical School, using connectomics to study cerebellar circuits. During his PhD at UC Berkeley in the Theunissen lab, he developed chronic recording methods and encoding models to study auditory processing in zebra finches, revealing how behavioral context shapes neural responses and how active categorization enhances neural precision in primary and secondary auditory areas. He joined the Gadagkar lab in 2025 to investigate the neural mechanisms of female mate choice and auditory evaluation in zebra finches.

Keshav is interested in the cell-type specific computations in the basal ganglia that underlie reinforcement learning. He finished his undergraduate studies at UC Irvine in 2019 where he worked with Dr. Jessica Bolton and Dr. Tallie Baram to study astrocytes in a mouse model of early life stress. He did his PhD at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in the labs of Dr. Joshua Burda and Dr. Simon Knott. With support from a NINDS F31 fellowship, his dissertation work utilized a wide range of next-generation sequencing methods, transgenic mouse lines, and in vivo models of injury to delineate the identity and functional consequences of astrocyte states across different neuropathologies. He joined the Gadagkar Lab in 2024 to continue his work on astrocytes, but now to understand how they may enable a zebra finch to maintain exquisite control over his song.

Jonathan Kasdin is a graduate student in the Neurobiology and Behavior PhD program. In 2018 he graduated from Princeton University with a degree in neuroscience. For his undergraduate thesis he worked with Michael Berry, who studies how information is processed in the visual cortex of mice. Jon found that neurons in primary visual cortex display ‘deviance detection’, or an increased response to stimuli which are novel or break a pre-existing rule, demonstrating an ability of a primary sensory area to exhibit higher order processing. In the Gadagkar lab, he hopes to use a combination of experimental neurophysiology and computational modeling to reveal the neural algorithms underlying song learning in zebra finches.

Jessica Burke is broadly interested in the neural mechanisms of social communication systems. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2018 with a degree in Neuroscience where she did her undergrad thesis with Marc Schmidt investigating the non-auditory streams that provide sensory feedback to singing birds. After graduating, she stayed on as a technician in Marc's lab where she helped set up a new study system, the brown-headed cowbird. Jessica used the non-singing females in this wild-caught species to show that the song system exists in non-singing female songbirds, and looks forward to figuring out how this circuit might be involved in female preference in zebra finches during her time in the Gadagkar lab.

Hannah is a summer intern in the Gadagkar Lab as an HHMI Cech Fellow. She is an undergraduate studying Neurobiology at the University of California, San Diego. In the lab, Hannah is working with Logan Thomas on the neural mechanisms underlying female mate preference in zebra finches. Broadly, she is interested in learning process and social decision-making, and hopes to pursue a PhD in neuroscience.

Hannah Chen is a student in the Columbia Neurobiology & Behavior PhD program. She graduated from MIT in 2020 with a degree in mathematics with computer science. During her undergrad, she worked with Kay Tye on amygdalostriatal transition zone circuits mediating conditioned fear and reward responses in mice, and with Ed Boyden on a computational model for neuronal cell identification from imaging data. During her time in the Gadagkar lab, she looks forward to integrating experimental neurophysiology with computational modeling to understand how the brain implements reinforcement learning.

Evan is a BRAINYAC intern in the Gadagkar Lab. He is a high school student attending Denzel Washington School of the Arts with a strong academic interest in neuroscience. He aspires to pursue this field at the postsecondary level, with a particular focus on how neural mechanisms influence developmental learning and behavioral processes.

Brian Frost is a postdoctoral scientist with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He earned his MS and PhD in electrical engineering from Columbia University in 2024 under Drs. Elizabeth Olson and Christine Hendon; his work involved the use of optical coherence tomography to measure vibrations within the mammalian cochlea. He then entered the Laboratory of Sensory Neuroscience at Rockefeller University under the advisement of Dr. A. James Hudspeth. There, he continued his studies of inner-ear biophysics by characterizing sound-evoked displacements in the cochlea of the tokay gecko. He also developed methods for tracking hair cell development in the zebrafish lateral line during development. He joined the Gadagkar lab in 2026.

Arnav Raha is a rotating student in the Gadagkar Lab. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 2021 with a degree in Bioengineering and a minor in Computer Science. At Berkeley he worked on the neural basis of social cognition in Egyptian fruit bats with Wujie Zhang in the Yartsev Lab; they found that when bats interact with each other, activity in their frontal lobes is highly correlated with each other. He then worked in the Gadagkar Lab as a research assistant for two years investigating vocal turn-taking in female zebra finches. Going forward, Arnav is interested in how language and vocal communication are processed in the brains of humans and other animals.

AJ is a lab admin and research assistant in the Gadagkar Lab. Her research interests include neural mechanisms of social behaviors and learning. Previously, AJ was a lab manager and research staff with the Hillman Lab where she conducted in-vivo neuroimaging studies on mouse models of neurological disease and their effect on neurovascular coupling. She is also currently in the process of completing her Masters in Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University.