K25: For reviewers of my NIH K25 grant click here.

My research interests include (but are not limited to) Neuroscience, Quantum Computation, Pattern Formation, Cosmology, Astrophysics, Topological Defects and Gravity.

In the Fall of 1995, I graduated from Brown University's physics department. My thesis concerned structure formation in cosmic string wakes.

My thesis and some subsequent work were on large-scale structure in cosmic string wakes and early in '97, I also finished up a project concerning the collapse of exotic textures, with Sean Carroll formerly at MIT, and the ITP in Santa Barbara, now an assistant professor at the University of Chicago and Ted Pyne at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Jo Ashbourn, Andrew Chamblin, Roberto Emparan and I investigated cosmic strings threaded through black holes , a subject with interesting implications about black hole hair.

For an open day for the public while I was at DAMTP, I made some movies of a simulation of waves in a water tank.

Neil Cornish, Janna Levin and I looked into the scattering of a scalar field off a (known to be chaotic) double black hole system. Some movies of preliminary results are here.

Here is a link to a source for information on current research in topological defects .

Some of my research has focused on finding efficient methods for simulating quantum fields on quantum computers, and matter creation in the early universe. In the latter system, once inflation ends and the universe is smoothed out, the inflaton, the field responsible for driving the accelerated expansion of the universe during inflation, dumps its energy into particles, and cool things can happen, like pattern formation in the early universe.

In 1999, I jumped ship from cosmological pursuits and now find myself at the Laboratory of Applied Mathematics in the Biomathematical Sciences Division of Mt. Sinai School of Medicine. Here, I'm working on a number of projects, one involved with simulating the visual cortex, a module of the brain devoted to processing visual information. And a number of projects analyzing visual cortex and also more generally biological imaging data.

Results from a simulation of an integrate-fire or burst model of lateral geniculate nucleus cells are here.

And here is a movie of the dynamical deoxyhemoglobin response of V1 to a single color stimulus. Check out the early darkening due to absorption by increased deoxyhemoglobin, and the subsequent whitening due to depletion of the deoxyhemoglobin.

Papers:

I'll put my Curriculum Vitae here, Resume here and Research Interests here for those considering hiring me...

You can find me at

Laboratory of Applied Mathematics, phone: 212-241-4033
Mt. Sinai School of Medicine         fax: 212-426-5037
One Gustave L. Levy Place
New York, NY 10029-6574
USA

And when I'm not there, you can find me rock climbing on the rattlesnake, tobogganing in vermont or hiking with dad and younger bro' Nathan and sometimes drawing pictures. You can find my wife Dr. Christine Fiorello who graduated from Tufts Veterinary School and underwent a hellish internship at Angell Memorial Animal Hospital run by the MSPCA, at Columbia University getting a Ph.D. in Biology, or snuggling our cats Woozle, who is orange with big green eyes, and Quiver (a cerebellar hypoplastic special needs cat) and our new addition, Lula the kitten. We also have a hedgehog named Fezziwig.

Finally, here are some amusements in the form of a game and some tunes in MP3 format.

Star light - star bright... we look up and we hope the stars look down, we pray that there may be stars for us to follow, stars moving across the heavens and leading us to our destiny, but it's only our vanity. We look at the galaxy and fall in love, but the universe cares less about us than we do about it, and the stars stay in their courses however much we may wish upon them to do otherwise. - Salman Rushdie, "The Moor's Last Sigh", 1995