Dr. Neda Shahidi
Group Leader University of Göttingen and German Primate Center
Postdoctoral Fellow University of Göttingen and German Primate Center
PhD University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
As a young undergraduate student at the University of Tehran studying electrical and computer engineering, Dr. Neda Shahidi interviewed robotics researchers to write about them and their research ventures for the department newsletter. While she was not yet doing research herself, these conversations introduced Neda to the types of questions and experiments driving academic research, lighting a spark that would fuel her future career. A few years later, she did a summer research stint in a computational neuroscience lab focused on emotional learning. They were using a circuit model of fear response as control system for mechanical gadgets. Neda was stunned to discover a mathematical explanation for brain functions—she was hooked. Today, Neda is thriving at this intersection of mathematics and neuroscience. She leads a group at the University of Göttingen, using complex modeling and data analysis to study embodied cognition in non-human primates.
Although her computational neuroscience research experience as an undergraduate was formative, Neda did not immediately pursue neuroscience. This was not because of a lack of interest in the brain, but rather because, in her academic system, changing your topic of study was quite difficult. In her case, she did not have enough of a background in biology to switch into neuroscience. After her undergraduate studies, she entered a master’s program in electrical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Her master’s coincided with the 2008 recession, and university funding dwindled. To support herself financially, Neda took a research assistant position in a neuroscience lab—her first wet lab experience. Not only was she invigorated by the research topic, but she realized that with this job on her resume, she might be a competitive applicant for neuroscience PhD programs. She was indeed successful in her applications, and she ultimately accepted a spot in the Neurosciences PhD program at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.
For her PhD research, Neda joined Dr. Valentin Dragoi’s lab. The lab studies how cortical circuits support perceptual decisions, and Neda’s first project was to investigate whether communication between neuron pairs in two regions of the visual cortex—primary visual cortex, or “V1,” and a mid-level area called V4—could be used to predict a monkey’s decision in a perceptual task. For two years, she used electrophysiology to listen to neurons’ firing patterns, trying to decode a link to decision-making. “I think I worked with electricity more when I was in neuroscience than when I was in electrical engineering,” Neda says. Despite the hard work, Neda was not finding anything promising. She decided to look at the experiment from a bigger-picture perspective. Instead of listening to individual neurons, she combined population-level activity in V1 and V4 to find precisely timed coordination between neurons and discovered a link to decision-making. She found that the accuracy of the monkeys’ perceptual decisions was related to the temporal coordination of spiking within V4 and between V1 and V4.
While it was satisfying to finish that first project, Neda was more excited by the serendipitous opportunity to contribute to another research direction in the lab. Some of her labmates had been working on a project aimed at understanding brain activity during naturalistic behavior. Neda was fascinated by the idea, but the project didn’t have room for another researcher. Then, after a turnover in lab members, her advisor asked her to join the team working on naturalistic behavior. Neda knew right away that this was the type of research she wanted to do for the rest of her career.
To fulfill this newly recognized goal of studying freely moving non-human primates, Neda identified some weaknesses in her skill set that she wanted to address before moving on to an independent position. Specifically, she wanted a deeper knowledge of computational modeling, as the data generated by naturalistic behaviors is incredibly complex. She also felt a pull towards the German Primate Center in Göttingen, Germany. She had heard that they have a strong focus on animal welfare and also foster strong connections between neuroscientists and field biologists, who have a deeper understanding of natural primate behavior. She had never imagined that she would leave the US, but she figured it would be a fun adventure to do a postdoc in Europe and see where it led. Ultimately, she fell in love with Göttingen, with its rich history and diverse scientific community, and has been there ever since.
For her first postdoc in Dr. Tim Gollisch’s lab at the University of Göttingen, she worked on computational modeling of retinal ganglion cells in the eye. Tim was an excellent teacher, and she quickly learned complex probabilistic modeling approaches. Having accomplished her goal and missing the behavioral work, Neda started a second postdoc with Dr. Alexander Gail, also in Göttingen. There, she returned to the naturalistic experiments she had loved at the end of her PhD. She set out to understand how monkeys make foraging decisions, both alone and together. To answer this question, she covered the ground of the large enclosure with woodchips and buried some food underneath. Neda then studied how the monkeys made decisions about where to forage for the food. At first, the monkeys appeared to be working randomly through the room to unearth the snacks, but when she began to crunch the data and create models, a pattern appeared. Neda discovered that information-seeking, reward, and proximity were central motivating factors in the foraging patterns, with each individual animal giving different weight to the different factors. The foraging patterns of the monkeys in the experiment were quite similar to those observed in primates and other animals in the wild, suggesting that her experimental setup and results were strongly relevant for understanding ethological behaviors.
After her postdoc in the Gail lab, Neda was offered a position as group leader at the University of Göttingen, with an opportunity to continue her experimental work at the primate center. As she hired and trained new graduate trainees, she decided to embark on a very different kind of experiment, one that had been on her mind for a long time: starting a family. The rules at the primate center are strict, and Neda had previously worried that she might not be able to work with the monkeys while pregnant. When she became a group leader, however, she was able to have her trainees work directly with the monkeys instead. While having kids necessitated an adjustment to her work schedule, Neda finds that the adjustments have had positive effects on her science. While she spends less time physically in the lab, she spends more time thinking about her science when she isn’t busy with everyday tasks of the job. Giving her mind a chance to wander has fueled new levels of scientific creativity.
In her own group, Neda is focused on questions of embodiment—how signals from the body feed back to the brain to influence behavior. She is exploring this question in a couple different contexts. First, her group is trying to understand how physiological states (e.g., vigilance) influence decisions. Second, they are investigating how an individual physically encodes an abstract concept like time passing in order to understand that concept, just like when humans tap a foot to count seconds passing. In all her group’s projects, Neda is eschewing the typical goal of reducing experimental variability. Instead, she wants to measure as much as possible while controlling as little as possible. This unique perspective of embracing the messiness of natural behavior—aided by novel computational tools powerful enough to deal with that messiness—is leading Neda and her team to push the frontier of what we know about how the body and brain communicate.
Find out more about Neda and her lab’s research here.
Listen to Margarida’s full interview with Neda on June 4, 2026 below!
