Diego Mendoza Halliday

Diego Mendoza Halliday is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh and Principal Investigator of the Mendoza-Halliday Lab. He holds affiliations with the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC), a joint venture between the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), and is a Research Affiliate at MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research. Previously, he served as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Research Scientist at MIT under Dr. Robert Desimone.

His education includes a Ph.D. in Cognitive Neurophysiology from McGill University (2014) and postdoctoral training at MIT. His research focuses on understanding the neural mechanisms underlying working memory manipulation, particularly how neurons and microcircuits across brain regions dynamically transform and monitor mental representations. Techniques employed include high-density laminar electrophysiology and custom optogenetic tools to study cognitive functions like attention and decision-making.

Key research themes include neuronal substrates of visual attention and working memory, spectrolaminar cortical organization, and optogenetic innovation. Recent work highlights dissociable neural pathways for attention and memory and universal cortical layer-specific activity patterns. His lab's interdisciplinary approach bridges electrophysiology, optogenetics, and computational modeling to uncover foundational mechanisms of human cognition.

Notable contributions include developing ultra-sensitive optogenetic opsins and revealing laminar-specific neural dynamics across primate cortex. Awards and honors are not explicitly listed in available texts, but his work has been published in top-tier journals like Neuron and Nature Neuroscience.