Roozbeh Kiani

Last updated
Roozbeh Kiani
Born
Amol, Iran
Alma mater University of Washington
Stanford
Awards Troland Research Award (2022)
McKnight Scholar Award (2016)
Pew Scholar in Biomedical Sciences (2016)
Sloan Research Fellowship (2014)
Donald B. Lindsley Prize in Behavioral Neuroscience (2010)
International Chemistry Olympiad Gold Medal (1995)
Scientific career
Fields Neuroscience
Cognitive Psychology
Institutions NYU
Thesis Bounded accumulation of evidence in parietal cortex: A flexible neural mechanism for making decisions and estimating certainty  (2009)
Doctoral advisor Michael Shadlen
Other academic advisors William Newsome
Hossein Esteky
Keiji Tanaka
Website https://as.nyu.edu/faculty/roozbeh-kiani.html

Roozbeh Kiani is an Iranian-American neuroscientist whose research focuses on how the brain makes decisions under uncertainty. He is a professor of Neural Science and Psychology at New York University (NYU), where he directs the Perceptual and Mnemonic Decision-Making Lab at the Center for Neural Science. Kiani’s work has investigated how the brain integrates evidence over time, encodes decision confidence, and flexibly adapts decision-making strategies to changing contexts.

Contents

Early life and education

Kiani was born and raised in Amol, Iran.[ citation needed ] He was awarded the top gold medal at the 27th International Chemistry Olympiad [1] in Beijing, China. After completing high school, Kiani pursued medicine at Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in Tehran, while cultivating his interests in the neural basis of vision and cognition. [2] He moved to the United States and joined the University of Washington, where he earned a Ph.D. under the mentorship of Michael Shadlen. [3] Following his Ph.D., Kiani conducted postdoctoral research with William T. Newsome at Stanford University, further developing neurophysiological and behavioral paradigms to probe decision-making circuits in primates [4] [5] [6]

Academic career and research

Kiani joined the faculty at New York University in 2013 and is currently a professor in the Center for Neural Science, with an affiliated appointment with the Department of Psychology. [7] His research explores how the brain accumulates information, estimates uncertainty, and makes decisions that are both flexible and robust in the face of environmental change. Kiani’s work integrates electrophysiology, neurostimulation, psychophysics, and computational modeling.

His work on decision confidence has shown how cortical neurons encode internal estimates of choice reliability and use them to guide subsequent behavior. [8] His studies of confidence-dependent hierarchical decision making [9] have shown multiscale integration processes that interact to shape behavior and have revealed how contextual cues dynamically reshape population-level neural representations. [10] Kiani has contributed to the development of causal perturbation methods to control neural population activity to shape behavior. [11] Earlier in his career, he studied object recognition, demonstrating that neurons in inferotemporal (IT) cortex represent object categories. [12]

Since 2024, Kiani co-directs the Methods in Computational Neuroscience course at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole.[ citation needed ]

From 2020 to 2025, Kiani was a member of the Board of Scientific Counselors at the National Eye Institute. [13]

Awards

Personal life

Kiani advocates for academic freedom and human rights, and has contributed to conversations around global science and political risk. [2]

References

  1. 1 2 "IChO Results". www.icho-official.org. Archived from the original on 2025-07-25. Retrieved 2025-10-22.
  2. 1 2 "Growing Up in Science, Roozbeh Kiani". growingupinscience.github.io. 2022. Retrieved 2025-10-23.
  3. ↑ Kiani, Roozbeh (2009). Bounded accumulation of evidence in parietal cortex: A flexible neural mechanism for making decisions and estimating certainty (PhD thesis). University of Washington.
  4. ↑ Kiani, Roozbeh; Cueva, Christopher J.; Reppas, John B.; Newsome, William T. (2014-07-07). "Dynamics of Neural Population Responses in Prefrontal Cortex Indicate Changes of Mind on Single Trials". Current Biology. 24 (13): 1542–1547. Bibcode:2014CBio...24.1542K. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2014.05.049. ISSN   0960-9822. PMC   4191655 . PMID   24954050.
  5. ↑ Kiani, Roozbeh; Cueva, Christopher J.; Reppas, John B.; Peixoto, Diogo; Ryu, Stephen I.; Newsome, William T. (2015-03-18). "Natural Grouping of Neural Responses Reveals Spatially Segregated Clusters in Prearcuate Cortex". Neuron. 85 (6): 1359–1373. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2015.02.014. ISSN   0896-6273. PMC   4366683 . PMID   25728571.
  6. ↑ Peixoto, Diogo; Verhein, Jessica R.; Kiani, Roozbeh; Kao, Jonathan C.; Nuyujukian, Paul; Chandrasekaran, Chandramouli; Brown, Julian; Fong, Sania; Ryu, Stephen I.; Shenoy, Krishna V.; Newsome, William T. (2021). "Decoding and perturbing decision states in real time". Nature. 591 (7851): 604–609. Bibcode:2021Natur.591..604P. doi:10.1038/s41586-020-03181-9. ISSN   1476-4687. PMID   33473215.
  7. 1 2 "Roozbeh Kiani, NYU". as.nyu.edu. Retrieved 2025-10-23.
  8. ↑ Kiani, Roozbeh; Shadlen, Michael N. (2009-05-08). "Representation of Confidence Associated with a Decision by Neurons in the Parietal Cortex". Science. 324 (5928): 759–764. Bibcode:2009Sci...324..759K. doi:10.1126/science.1169405. ISSN   0036-8075. PMC   2738936 . PMID   19423820.
  9. ↑ Purcell, Braden A.; Kiani, Roozbeh (2016-08-02). "Hierarchical decision processes that operate over distinct timescales underlie choice and changes in strategy". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 113 (31): E4531 –E4540. Bibcode:2016PNAS..113E4531P. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1524685113 . PMC   4978308 . PMID   27432960.
  10. ↑ Okazawa, Gouki; Hatch, Christina E.; Mancoo, Allan; Machens, Christian K.; Kiani, Roozbeh (2021-07-08). "Representational geometry of perceptual decisions in the monkey parietal cortex". Cell. 184 (14): 3748–3761.e18. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.05.022. ISSN   0092-8674. PMC   8273140 . PMID   34171308.
  11. ↑ Nejatbakhsh, Amin; Fumarola, Francesco; Esteki, Saleh; Toyoizumi, Taro; Kiani, Roozbeh; Mazzucato, Luca (2024). "Predicting the effect of micro-stimulation on macaque prefrontal activity based on spontaneous circuit dynamics". Physical Review Research. 5 (4): 043211. doi:10.1103/physrevresearch.5.043211. ISSN   2643-1564. PMC   11636805 . PMID   39669288.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: article number as page number (link)
  12. ↑ Kiani, Roozbeh; Esteky, Hossein; Mirpour, Koorosh; Tanaka, Keiji (2007). "Object Category Structure in Response Patterns of Neuronal Population in Monkey Inferior Temporal Cortex". Journal of Neurophysiology. 97 (6): 4296–4309. doi:10.1152/jn.00024.2007. ISSN   0022-3077. PMID   17428910.
  13. ↑ "Board of Scientific Counselors Permanent Members | National Eye Institute". www.nei.nih.gov. Retrieved 2025-10-23.
  14. ↑ "Past Lindsley Prize Winners – The Grass Foundation" . Retrieved 2025-10-23.
  15. ↑ "Fellows Database | Alfred P. Sloan Foundation". sloan.org. Retrieved 2025-10-23.
  16. ↑ "Awardees". McKnight Foundation. Retrieved 2025-10-23.
  17. ↑ "Roozbeh Kiani, M.D., Ph.D." pew.org. Retrieved 2025-10-23.
  18. ↑ "Troland Research Award". National Academy of Sciences. Retrieved 2025-10-23.
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