Danilo Bzdok is a medical doctor and computer scientist with a dual background in systems neuroscience and machine learning algorithms. After medical training at RWTH Aachen University (Germany), Université de Lausanne (Switzerland), and Harvard Medical School (USA), he completed one Ph.D. in brain-imaging neuroscience (Research Center Juelich, Germany, 2012) and one Ph.D. in computer science in machine learning statistics at INRIA Saclay and Neurospin (France, 2016). Danilo currently serves as Associate Professor at McGill’s Faculty of Medicine and as Canada CIFAR AI Chair at Mila - Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute, Montreal, Canada, including cross-appointments at the McConnell Brain Imaging Center, Ludmer Centre for Neuroinformatics and Mental Health, Montreal Neurological Institute, and the School of Computer Science at McGill University. In his free time, he enjoys French and Italian culture, language and languages, playing chess or Go, and consuming excessive amounts of music.

Badr Ait Hammou is a postdoctoral researcher at the intersection of Artificial intelligence (AI) and neuroscience. His current research focuses on machine learning, data-driven analysis techniques for large-scale biomedical datasets. Before joining the lab, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Montreal, where he conducted research on deep learning techniques to solve a variety of medical computer vision problems applied to Ophthalmology, including video action recognition, image generation, and image classification. He completed a Ph.D. in Computer Science at Mohammed V University in Rabat. His doctoral work lies in the area of AI for Big Data analytics. It covers a set of intelligent systems based on distributed machine learning, distributed deep learning techniques, and natural language processing (NLP) to solve several challenges related to real-world problems in the context of big data, such as personalized recommendations, group recommendations, and real-time social media analysis.

Ryan McPhedrain is a postdoctoral researcher with a background in molecular biology, neuroscience and data analytics. He completed his PhD at McGill University supervised by Dr. Edward Ruthazer, studying the molecular mechanisms governing plasticity in the developing brain. His current research uses neurocomputational and machine learning methods to characterize the impact of psychedelics on lateralized brain function. In his other life, Ryan enjoys climbing, going on multi-day hikes and taking advantage of the cold Montreal winters playing shinny (outdoor hockey).

Prior to joining the Bzdok Lab at McGill, Liam completed his bachelor’s degree in Engineering Physics at UBC and subsequently worked on the R&D team at an additive manufacturing startup. As a doctoral student in the Computer Science department, he is investigating the function and disfunction of the human brain through the lens of single-cell omics, as well as developing computational methods to better analyze and interpret this high-dimensional biological data.

Karin Saltoun is a PhD student in Neuroscience at McGill University. She studied biophysics at York University (Toronto) where she developed a love for using math and physics to understand biological problems on a more fundamental level. During her undergraduate career, first through work in an experimental lab focusing on precision measurements in atomic physics, before moving to a computational neuroscience lab developing algorithms for distinguishing sleep states from brain behaviour. She is currently working in Dr. Bzdok’s lab to understand brain asymmetry at a population level using a variety of machine learning techniques. When she’s not glued to her computer, she enjoys baking desserts or reading fiction.

Jack is a PhD student in the Quantitative Life Sciences program at McGill. Prior to joining the lab, Jack completed an Honours BSc in Statistics and Biochemistry at the University of Toronto, where he was a Schulich Leader and National Scholar. His current research is focused on untangling the complexity of human disease and biology using increasingly powerful deep learning approaches. An avid distance runner, Jack is also captain of McGill’s varsity cross country team, and a member of the varsity track team.

Anwesha is starting her PhD in the Biological and Biomedical Engineering department at McGill university. After completing her Masters in Aersopace Engineering, she went on to apply her engineering skills as a Quantitative Researcher at JP Morgan Chase, Mumbai. She developed her interest in machine learning techniques while working on her Masters thesis for object detection and 6D pose estimation. She also did a summer internship at CERN where she worked on High Granularity Calorimeter data and applied machine learning techniques to classify fundamental particles. She now hopes to use ML techniques to further the domain of neuroscience and better understand the brain. In her leisure time, Anwesha loves reading fantasy, hiking, and yoga. She also enjoys dancing and is trained in Bharatnatyam.

Le is pursuing his PhD in the Integrated Program of Neuroscience at McGill University. He finished his bachelor’s degree in computer science and master’s degree in psychology at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. He is interested in the relationship between human behavior and the brain and is currently studying the effect of chronotype (circadian rhythms) on the brain pattern by applying machine learning methods on population datasets. In his free time, Zhou reads fiction, watches movies, and plays games.

Chloé Savignac is a PhD student in the Integrated Program in Neuroscience at McGill University, interested in the applications of machine learning to dementia research. She joined the lab in January 2021 after graduating with First Class Honours from a B.A. & Sc. in Cognitive Science at McGill University. Her PhD work combines Big Data analytics tools with state-of-the-art machine learning techniques to derive factors of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) susceptibility in population datasets of up to half a million participants. Her master’s thesis leveraged the power of structural brain scans from ~40,000 participants of the UK Biobank imaging cohort to find population signatures of familial AD risk as a function of APOE haplotypes. She has since shifted focus to single-cell genomics, aiming to identify patterns of transcriptomic markers uniquely linked to AD disease in male and female patients. Outside the lab, Chloé enjoys learning new languages and exploring cuisines from around the world.

Greg completed his bachelor’s degree in Physics, summa cum laude, at Temple University. He then did a M.Sc. at Mcgill in Physics. After working and gaining interest in data science and engineering, Greg joined the Bzdok Lab and currently works with LLM’s and medical data.

Praneet is a PhD student in the School of Computer Science at McGill University. His research focuses on mechanistic interpretability of large frontier models and studying altered states of consciousness through psychedelic data. With a strong interest in understanding how models encode and transform information, Praneet’s work seeks to contribute to the development of more interpretable and robust AI systems. Outside of his academic pursuits, he is passionate about exploring the intersection of science, philosophy, and human experience.

Sepehr obtained his Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering and later transitioned to software development, working at Morgan Stanley where he honed his skills in developing robust financial systems. With a deep interest in artificial intelligence and machine learning, he has contributed to various projects in biomedical data analysis. Sepehr is currently pursuing a PhD in Computer Science at McGill University, focusing on the integration of AI techniques in genomics research. His work aims to bridge the gap between computational models and real-world genetic data, contributing to the understanding of complex biological systems. In his spare time, Sepehr enjoys playing volleyball, going camping, and watching movies, balancing his academic pursuits with outdoor and leisure activities.

Karan is a PhD student in the Integrated Program of Neuroscience at McGill University. After completing his M.S. in Artificial intelligence from the State University of New York at Buffalo, he worked with Deloitte Consulting, New York. During the course of time, he became interested in the cross-domain field of Neuro-AI. Now, He plans to explore the exciting intersections of Neuroscience & AI and seek new applications of Neuroscience in AI. For hobbies, He loves going to the Gym and reading about a variety of themes related to Humanities subjects like history, economics & geography, etc.

Pedro Piquet is a PhD student in Neuroscience at McGill University. He is currently working in Dr. Bzdok’s lab to investigate the neuroscience of psychedelics. Before joining the lab, Pedro completed a BSc in Biomedical Physics and a MSc in Applied Physics at UNICAMP, Brasil. He also attended Harvard University as a visiting undergraduate, and later on as a visiting graduate student, where he worked as a research assistant at the Martino’s Center for Biomedical Imaging and at the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology. Outside the lab, Pedro can often be found practicing competitive cheerleading or at the gym.

Shambhavi Aggarwal is a student in the Biological & Biomedical Engineering Master’s program at McGill University. She obtained her undergraduate degree in Information Technology, during which she cultivated her interest in Machine Learning and Computer Vision. Her passion led her to pursue research internships in Computer Vision and Quantum Machine Learning at IISc Bangalore and Purdue University, respectively. After graduation, she applied her skills by working as a Computer Vision Engineer at Claritas HealthTech, where she used deep learning techniques to analyze medical data. Her ambition is to expand her knowledge of machine learning algorithms and explore how they can be applied to medical data. During her free time, she relishes activities such as music, singing, and cooking, while also engaging in interesting conversations with people.

David is a student in McGill’s Master of Science in Computer Science (Thesis) program. He graduated from Concordia’s Bachelor of Engineering in Software Engineering program with internship experience. He then worked in industry as a software developer. During that time, he began self-studying machine learning and decided to join the Bzdok Lab to pursue the field. His research seeks to gain insight from brain asymmetry to inspire breakthroughs in large language model attention mechanisms. David is a dedicated dragon boat paddler and hopes to compete in the 2026 Club Crew World Championships in Taiwan.