Tavoni Lab

Our team

We are a diverse group of physicists and neuroscientists united in our quest to answer intriguing questions about the nature of brain computations. Information in neural networks is continuously encoded, transformed, and retrieved, with evolutionary and learning processes optimizing these functions to support effective decision-making and behavior. We believe that these optimization processes offer a unique lens through which fundamental principles can be uncovered.

Our current efforts focus on understanding different forms of optimization in the healthy brain. Ultimately, our goal is to uncover fundamental principles underlying brain function and contribute to understanding how these principles are disrupted in brain diseases. The members of our lab come from a wide range of cultural and scientific backgrounds, bringing energy and diverse perspectives to our group.

About Dr. Tavoni

Dr. Tavoni trained in physical engineering at the Polytechnic University of Turin and earned an MS in Physics of Complex Systems from an international university consortium based in Italy and France. She completed her PhD in physics at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, with a thesis focused on statistical physics techniques for studying learning and memory consolidation in the brain. She then joined the Computational Neuroscience Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania as a postdoctoral fellow, where she worked in the Balasubramanian and Gold labs on various problems in perceptual learning and higher-level cognition. In 2017, she received the Swartz Fellowship Award for Theory in Neuroscience. In November 2020, Dr. Tavoni joined the faculty of the Department of Neuroscience at Washington University. In 2024, she received the Sloan Research Fellowship Award.