Neuroscience Specialist Joins HDSI in First Postdoctoral Fellowship Cohort
In expanding its resources for data science access to the campus community, HDSI has appointed Stéphanie Martin in its first cohort of Postdoctoral Fellows. Martin is currently serving as a postdoctoral fellow at University of Geneva in Switzerland, and is set to start her two-year appointment at UC San Diego this summer.
Martin brings experience in machine learning for decoding various higher-order cognitive functions. Her background includes developing novel cognitive neuroprosthetics, the devices that restore or aid nervous system functions lost to illness or injury, such as cochlear implants for hearing loss. Her HDSI mentors will be Brad Voytek and Virginia de Sa, both faculty members in the Department of Cognitive Science. As an HDSI Postdoctoral Fellow, she and the other Fellows will have the opportunity for research collaboration with a variety of faculty and students at the university, and to participate in HDSI activities such as seminars, industry partnerships and cross-disciplinary projects.
Martin has written and been interviewed extensively in the media on neuroscience in such publications as Science, Scientific American and New Scientist. Her outreach work includes co-founding and serving as president of an organization running hacking contests aimed at designing solutions to improve daily living for the disabled.
Her Ph.D. thesis research was on neural engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technologies in Lausanne where she earned her doctorate; she performed postdoctoral work at the Auditory Language Lab at the University of Geneva, investigating spike-field interactions during sensory and decisional processing in the human cortex, the work contributed to the understanding of activity during various cognitive functions such as speech and predictive coding. She performed master’s work at UC Berkeley in neuroscience. Martin earned her bachelor of science degree in Life Sciences & Technology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technologies, and a master’s of science degree in bioengineering from the same institution, specializing in neuroscience and biomedical technologies.
Her data-science related abilities include a knowledge of engineering signal processing, data analysis, advanced statistics, pattern classification, machine learning, data mining, speech recognition, electronics, brain-computer interface, connectivity analysis, anatomy and neurobiology of language. She speaks four languages, and earned multiple track and field medals while representing Switzerland.
