Daniel Butts

Daniel A. Butts is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Maryland College Park, affiliated with the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences. He holds additional affiliations with the Neuroscience & Cognitive Science (NACS) program, Institute for Systems Research (ISR), and Biophysics. His research focuses on computational and theoretical neuroscience, particularly understanding how neural systems perform computations underlying sensory perception and natural intelligence. He studies sensory cortex processing, hierarchical information flow, and top-down behavioral influences using advanced computational methods and collaborations with experimental neurophysiologists.

Butts earned a B.A. from Oberlin College (1994) and a Ph.D. in Physics from UC Berkeley (2000). His lab, NeuroTheory Lab, develops models for neural coding and integrates experimental data from primate and rodent visual systems. He teaches courses in computational neuroscience, cellular neurophysiology, and neural coding. Current research includes studying visual neuron activity modulation by behavior, neural selectivity during free viewing, and the role of latent variables in shared neural variability.

Recent work highlights his lab's contributions to understanding how spontaneous movements affect visual processing and the application of hierarchical variational autoencoders (VAEs) to model primate motion processing. His group collaborates broadly, addressing both theoretical challenges and experimental validation in sensory neuroscience.