{"id":63,"date":"2026-06-09T12:59:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T12:59:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/people.socsci.tau.ac.il\/mu\/marius\/?p=63"},"modified":"2026-06-09T13:16:49","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T13:16:49","slug":"postdocs-caltech-cmu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.socsci.tau.ac.il\/mu\/marius\/postdocs-caltech-cmu\/","title":{"rendered":"Postdocs: Caltech, CMU"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Following my PhD I went for a postdoctoral at Caltech with\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.klab.caltech.edu\/~koch\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Christof Koch.\u00a0<\/a>With Christof I worked on computational neuroscience models of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mitpressjournals.org\/doi\/abs\/10.1162\/neco.1994.6.5.795?journalCode=neco\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">neural activity (<\/a>my physicist friend Zeev Olami helped here\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/prl.aps.org\/abstract\/PRL\/v74\/i2\/p326_1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">too<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/prl.aps.org\/abstract\/PRL\/v74\/i2\/p326_1\">;<\/a>\u00a0sadly Zeev died of a brain tumour few years later; he is greatly missed), which I then developed together with\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/neuroscience.jhu.edu\/index.php\/resources\/directory\/faculty\/ernst-niebur\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Ernst Niebur<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bccn-munich.de\/people\/scientists-2\/martin-stemmler\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Martin Stemmler<\/a>\u00a0to bridge between physiology and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/aks.rutgers.edu\/eyetrack\/ContextEffects\/StemmlerUsherNiebur95.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">psychophysics.\u00a0<\/a>Working in Christof\u2019s lab was both inspiring and formative. One of the first things I noticed when I joined his lab was a note on his door saying: \u201ceither you can have a job done or you can\u2019t; everything else is just wimpy\u201d. Also, it was not unusual to come to the lab at midnight and find about half of the people still working or even sleeping for an hour or so on a mattress, before getting back to it. We did have fun, though, and not only with the science. Diverse food, films and surely the Venice beach that remains one of my favourites. After Caltech, I did a second postdoc at CMU with\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/psych.stanford.edu\/~jlm\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Jay McClelland<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.pni.princeton.edu\/ncc\/JDC\/JDC\/Home_Page.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Jonathan Cohen<\/a>. They were both excellent guides to rigorous research that comes from a deep commitment to knowledge, and I got an excellent opportunity to go deeper in cognitive theory and to link it with neurocomputational\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencemag.org\/content\/283\/5401\/549.short\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">models<\/a>. Also I started, together with Jay, to examine the dynamics of evidence integration and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/psycnet.apa.org\/journals\/rev\/108\/3\/550.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">decision-making<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 my main research field today and together with Jonathan we examined the cognitive role of the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.netdoctor.co.uk\/heart-and-blood\/medicines\/noradrenaline.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>Noradrenaline<\/em>\u00a0<\/a>system in\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencemag.org\/content\/283\/5401\/549.short\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">attentional regulation<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Following my PhD I went for a postdoctoral at Caltech with\u00a0Christof Koch.\u00a0With Christof I worked on computational neuroscience models of\u00a0neural activity (my physicist friend Zeev Olami helped here\u00a0too;\u00a0sadly Zeev died of a brain tumour few years later; he is greatly missed), which I then developed together with\u00a0Ernst Niebur\u00a0and\u00a0Martin Stemmler\u00a0to bridge between physiology and\u00a0psychophysics.\u00a0Working in Christof\u2019s &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/people.socsci.tau.ac.il\/mu\/marius\/postdocs-caltech-cmu\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Postdocs: Caltech, CMU&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":171,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.socsci.tau.ac.il\/mu\/marius\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.socsci.tau.ac.il\/mu\/marius\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.socsci.tau.ac.il\/mu\/marius\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.socsci.tau.ac.il\/mu\/marius\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/171"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.socsci.tau.ac.il\/mu\/marius\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/people.socsci.tau.ac.il\/mu\/marius\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78,"href":"https:\/\/people.socsci.tau.ac.il\/mu\/marius\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions\/78"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.socsci.tau.ac.il\/mu\/marius\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.socsci.tau.ac.il\/mu\/marius\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.socsci.tau.ac.il\/mu\/marius\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}