Ila Fiete

Ila Fiete is a professor in MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and an associate investigator at the McGovern Institute. Her research focuses on describing how plasticity and development shape neural networks to perform computation, and how the brain represents and manipulates information. Her goal is to understand how the brain constructs and uses memory for spatial and non-spatial reasoning, the mechanisms for error control in neural codes, and rules for synaptic plasticity that enable neural circuit organization. Through these avenues, she hopes to understand the circuits that underlie short-term memory, integration, inference, navigation and reasoning in the brain. She earned a BS in physics and mathematics from the University of Michigan, and a PhD in physics from Harvard University.