Ila Fiete

Ila Fiete is a Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, an Associate Investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and Director of the K. Lisa Yang Integrative and Computational Neuroscience (ICoN) Center. Her research focuses on understanding neural mechanisms underlying memory, navigation, and learning through computational and theoretical neuroscience approaches.

Education: B.S. in Physics and Mathematics from the University of Michigan; Ph.D. in Physics from Harvard University.

Research Interests: Grid cell function, spatial cognition, neural network dynamics, cognitive mapping, and the interplay between neuroscience and artificial intelligence. Her work has elucidated theoretical frameworks for grid cell activity stabilization, developmental emergence, and their roles in spatial and episodic memory. She pioneered studies connecting neural error correction codes to fault-tolerant networks and developed computational models of hippocampal-entorhinal circuits.

Awards: 2022 Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience (Society for Neuroscience).

Labs/Teams: Leads the Fiete Lab and directs the ICoN Center, fostering interdisciplinary research at the interface of neuroscience, computation, and AI. Her work bridges biological plausibility with machine learning innovation.

Current Projects: Exploring modular neural architectures, fault tolerance in biological systems, and the cognitive foundations of spatial navigation. Active in developing neuro-inspired AI models and studying neural dynamics across scales.