Anne Draelos

Anne Draelos, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor with dual appointments in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Department of Computational Medicine & Bioinformatics at the University of Michigan. She is also affiliated with the Michigan Neuroscience Institute, the Michigan Institute for Data Science, and the Michigan Institute for Computational Discovery and Engineering. Her research focuses on developing statistically efficient methods for real-time and adaptive neuroscience experiments.

Dr. Draelos received her Ph.D. in Physics and M.S. in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Duke University, followed by undergraduate degrees in Physics and Computer Science from North Carolina State University. Her academic journey spans quantum physics, electrical engineering, and neuroscience, reflecting her interdisciplinary approach to complex scientific problems.

Her research interests center on real-time analysis of neural and behavioral data using machine learning and statistical techniques. The Draelos Lab develops methods for adaptive stimulation of neural dynamics, multimodal latent space modeling, real-time brain-computer interfaces with neural stimulations, and Bayesian optimization for visual stimuli. Her work bridges the gap between simplistic and complex stimulus spaces to provide new insights into how sensory stimuli are represented in the brains of behaving animals.

Analysis of her recent publications reveals a strong focus on developing computational methods that enable real-time analysis and intervention in neural systems. Her work spans from low-dimensional neural manifold modeling to large-scale neural connectivity estimation, with applications ranging from larval zebrafish to non-human primates. She has pioneered approaches that combine streaming data analysis with adaptive experimental designs to accelerate neuroscience discovery.

• Sloan Fellowship in Neuroscience (2024)
• Career Award at the Scientific Interface from Burroughs Wellcome Fund (2021)
• Swartz Foundation Fellow for Theory in Neuroscience (2020)
• Best Poster Award, IEEE Brain Workshop on Advanced NeuroTechnologies (2020)
• Ruth K. Broad Postdoctoral Fellowship (2019-2020)

Dr. Draelos actively mentors students across multiple levels, including undergraduate, master's, and Ph.D. candidates. Her lab has received funding from multiple prestigious sources including the University of Michigan Research Scout Award, Sloan Fellowship, Burroughs Wellcome Fund, and the National Institute on Aging. Her research philosophy emphasizes tight integration between computational models and experimental neuroscience, creating a feedback loop where models inform experiments and experimental results refine models.

The Draelos Lab is located at the North Campus Research Complex (NCRC) at the University of Michigan, where they develop and implement cutting-edge methods for real-time neural data analysis and adaptive experimentation. The lab maintains strong collaborations with several other research groups including the Kaczorowski Lab, Chestek Lab, Savier Lab, Burgess Lab, and Naumann Lab.