Adithya E. Rajagopalan

I am an experimental and computational neuroscientist studying the rules and algorithms governing decision making. Currently I am a postdoctoral associate in Dr. Christine Constantinople's lab at NYU's Center for Neural Science. My present work focuses on understanding how complex cognitive representations necessary for decision-making within orbitofrontal circuits are constructed from simpler inputs.

I graduated from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Pune, India with a dual B.S.-M.S. degree in Biology in 2017. I then earned my PhD in Neuroscience in 2023 from Glenn Turner’s lab at the HHMI Janelia Research Campus via a joint graduate program with Johns Hopkins University. During my PhD I used Drosophila melanogaster to study value-based decision-making at the level of behavior, circuits and theory, leveraging the model system’s plethora of genetic tools to expand theories explaining decision-making under uncertainty.

Outside the lab I enjoy football (refuse to call it soccer), board games and live music. I am also an avid science-communicator and write articles aimed at sharing cutting edge science to readers in a non-techincal form. Check out the blog portion of my website as well as other writings for Nautilus and The Wire.