01.About
I’m a third-year neuroscience PhD candidate at UCSF working on building deep-learning models to better understand how neurons communicate to each other and represent the external world.
02.Experiences
Graduate Student University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)
Aug 2023 — present
In the Neuroscience Graduate Program, working in the lab of Dr. Reza Abbasi-Asl. Building deep-learning models and analyzing large-scale neural time-series datasets.
Research Intern École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
May 2023 - Aug 2022
Worked with Dr. Carl Petersen and the Blue Brain Project to build a biophysically-realistic model of the rat barrel cortex.
Research Assistant Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
May 2021 - May 2023
Worked with Dr. Patrick Kanold on a project focused on mapping tonotopic maps in the audtiory cortex of mice using widefield and 2-photon calcium imaging.
-- Babola TA*, Donovan N*, Darcy SS*, Spjut CD, & Kanold PO (2025). Limiting hearing loss in transgenic mouse models. eNeuro. https://doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0465-24.2025 (* shared first author)
-- Donovan N, Babola TA, Darcy SS, & Kanold PO (2023, April). Preventing progressive hearing loss in common transgenic mouse lines. Poster presented at Day of Undergraduate Research in Engineering, the Arts & Humanities, Medicine, and the Sciences (DREAMS), Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.
03.Contact
Feel free to reach out to me via email at naomi.donovan@ucsf.edu