Welcome!
Hello, I’m Tom! I’m a research scientist, working in the area of computational and cognitive neuroscience. I am currently a postdoctoral research scientist in the laboratory of Dr. Joshua Jacobs at Columbia University. Before that, I did my PhD with Dr. Bradley Voytek, at the University of California, San Diego.
My research is focused on electrophysiological recordings in human subjects, including methods and applications for analyzing single-unit, periodic, and aperiodic electrophysiological neural activity and how it relates to neural computation, cognition, and disease. For a high-level overview, my research work has been covered in Quanta Magazine (reprinted by Wired), and is also described on the research page.
For the full scientific version, you can check out my list of publications, and/or my CV.
On this site you can find out a bit about me and my work, including:
- Research: a narrative description of my research work
- Code: links and descriptions of available code
- Resources: links and descriptions of various resources that I work on
- Teaching: links and descriptions of my teaching activities
- Blog: miscellaneous writing, including a mixture of research and personal topics
Brief Profile
I grew up in Quebec, Canada, in a small town full of ski hills and colourful autumn leaves. At univeristy, I studied Cognitive Science, a major I originally chose due to be able to explore multiple different areas, which led to become enamored with how interdisciplinary approaches allow for investigating broad and interesting questions from multiple distinct perspectives.
After getting involved in research, I decided to go to graduate school, where,I started to focus more on methods development and computational analyses, with a focus on questions about how best to measure and interpret features of interest in neural data. My grad school experience allowed me the flexibility to dive into scientific computing and open-source tool development, which have become key parts of my work. This led me to a research focus on trying to understand electrical signals in the brain
- investigating how we can measure them, and what they might mean in relation to cognition and disease. Now, working as a postdoc, my interests broadly cover topics such as investigating functional neural organization, methods development for neuro-electrophysiological data, and investigating how patterns of electrical neural activity relate to cognition and disease.
I also think it’s important to consider how we do science, including doing science that is transparent and accessible, such as by using and releasing open data and developing openly accessible tools and resources. I also think it’s important to working towards making science more equitable and inclusive for all, and in this quest I try to learn from and work with groups and programs such as the SPARK society, Cientifico Latino and Clubes de Ciencia.
Ultimately, one of my favorite things about working in science is getting to work with lots of amazing people. I have been extremely lucky to have some amazing mentors who have guided me in my journey so far. Everything I work on is some form of collaboration across many wonderful research assistants, collaborators, teaching assistants and code contributors whose work and contributions are reflected in everything I do.
Contact
If you’d like to get in touch, you can e-mail me at tdonoghue.research@gmail.com.
You can also find me on Github or Twitter.
Website Source
This website is hosted using Github pages, and the source repository is available here.
This page is usually up to date. You can check the last updated date on website update log.