Researchers and Postdoctoral Scholars
Below are the current researchers and postdoctoral scholars with the Center for Science and Society and the Presidental Scholars in Society and Neuroscience program.
Paul Linton is a neuroscientist and philosopher specializing in 3D vision. He received his PhD in 2021 from the Centre for Applied Vision Research, City, University of London, where his research challenged our understanding of distance perception by showing the visual system is unable to triangulate distance using the two eyes. He was also part of the DeepFocus team at Meta Reality Labs. Paul is the author of The Perception and Cognition of Visual Space (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). Before vision science, he was a stipendiary lecturer in law at St Hilda’s College, Oxford University, and a teaching fellow in philosophy at University College London. As a Presidential Scholar, Paul will develop his new two-stage theory of 3D vision using the latest techniques in machine learning and fMRI in the hope of explaining how we experience the 3D world.
Paul Linton is a Nomis Fellow of the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University.
Project Title: New Approaches to 3D Vision
Nedah Nemati researches the role of lived experience in neuroscientific experimentation and the influence of such experience in characterizing behavioral and cognitive concepts. She received philosophical training at Millsaps College (BSc), earned her MSc in biological sciences at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, and PhD in history and philosophy of science from the University of Pittsburgh.
As a Presidential Scholar, Nedah will draw from historical and phenomenological traditions to characterize an account of lived experience in neuroscience and to develop a philosophy and science of behavior in neuroscience - one that includes what should count as a behavior. Her investigations reflect a longstanding interest in the potential and limitations of using neuroscience to impart information about the mind. By characterizing the role of lived experience in scientific practices, Nedah’s project will aim to impart greater clarity in scientific uses of behavioral concepts and their clinical translation.
Project Title: Moving from Flies to Frogs: Understanding Behavior through Lived Experience
Natalia Pasternak is a microbiologist, with a PhD and post-doctorate in microbiology from the University of São Paulo, Brazil. She is the publisher of Question of Science magazine and president of Question of Science Institute. In 2020 and 2021, she was chosen Brazilian of the Year in Science by IstoE Magazine. She was chosen Personality of the Year by the Group of Latin America Daily Newspapers and received the Ockham Award from The Skeptic magazine.
She has written three books on popularization of science including Science in our daily lives, which won Brazil's National Literature prize for best science book in 2021. She is currently an Adjunct Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Science and Society and an Adjunct Professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs at Columbia University, where she teaches on the use of science for policy making. Her research focuses on how to improve science communication, vaccine uptake, and combat denialism and misinformation, and helping to create an international collaboration for science-based global policies.
Madi Whitman is the director of undergraduate studies and assistant director of curriculum development in the Center for Science and Society and a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology. As a sociocultural anthropologist and science and technology studies (STS) researcher, Madi studies how technologies, institutions, and subjectivities are made together. This research is currently animated by questions about surveillance and marginality in changing regimes of data collection in higher education in the United States.
Madi’s pedagogical work includes supporting interdisciplinary co-teaching at Columbia, developing curricula in science and society, and investigating the landscape of STS education in the U.S. Madi earned a PhD in anthropology from Purdue University in 2020, completed a BA in anthropology at the University of North Dakota, and was previously a Visiting Research Fellow in the Program on Science, Technology and Society at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Hadeel Assali is an anthropologist and former engineer whose work looks at the ongoing colonial legacies of the discipline of geology as well as anti-colonial ways of knowing and relating to the earth in southern Palestine. She received her PhD in Anthropology in 2021 from Columbia University. She examines the narratives deployed to produce space(s) and how they become imbued with the authority to do so. She runs the “Race, Climate Change, and Environmental Justice” seminar, which was founded by earth science graduate students, with the goal of exploring ways of decolonizing the earth sciences. She is also a filmmaker and writer whose work draws heavily from her family stories based in Gaza, Palestine.
Prior to her anthropological training, Hadeel was trained as a chemical engineer at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and the National University of Singapore.
This postdoctoral position is supported by a grant from the Arts & Sciences’ Graduate Equity Initiative.