# HI, I'M ORHAN.
[""]
def about_me():
"""
I am a PhD candidate in Psychology at UC Davis. I study the neural mechanisms of visual attention, with a particular focus on attentional control in the prefrontal cortex. My research combines electrophysiological recordings, eye-tracking data, and computational methods to examine how neural circuit dynamics support visual processing and attentional selection. More broadly, I am interested in how distributed neural systems transform sensory information into perception, cognition, and goal-directed behavior.
- Jun 2026My second PhD project is out as a reviewed preprint in eLife: monkeys, like us, look at the meaningful parts of a scene.
- May 2026Received the 2026–27 Victor and Meg Chan Graduate Student Award.
- Mar 2026Part of my research assistant project from Trento is out in Human Brain Mapping: face and scene areas anchor distinct brain networks.
- Mar 2026Received a UC Davis Summer Research Fellowship for summer 2026.
- Mar 2026My first PhD project is out in Nature Communications: parietal cortex shapes the neural timescales of prefrontal neurons.
- Nov 2025Poster at SfN in San Diego on how scene meaning guides attention in macaques.
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- Oct 2025Received a travel award from the UC Davis Graduate Student Association.
- Sep 2025Poster at the Bay Area Memory Meeting in Davis: experience shapes where monkeys look in natural scenes.
- May 2025Poster at the UC Davis Center for Neuroengineering and Medicine symposium on parietal control of prefrontal timescales.
- Sep 2024Gave a talk at Bay Area Vision Research Day in Berkeley on parietal inactivation and its effect on frontal eye field neurons.
- Nov 2023My first SfN poster, in Washington, D.C.: inactivating parietal cortex lengthens timescales in the frontal eye field.
- Jun 2023Awarded an NSF NeuralStorm Fellowship in Neuroengineering for 2023–24.
- Mar 2023My first paper, from my master's in Trento, is out in European Journal of Neuroscience: FEF and IFJ have distinct connectivity fingerprints.
- Jun 2022My first conference poster, at VSS (online), on the connectivity fingerprints of FEF and IFJ.
- Mar 2022Graduated from the University of Trento with an M.Sc. in Cognitive Science.
- Jan 2019Graduated from Boğaziçi University in Istanbul with a B.A. in Philosophy.
"""
- 2023–2024: NeuralStorm fellow
- 2022–now: PhD candidate, UC Davis
- 2022–now: Graduate researcher, Xiaomo Lab, CNS
- 2022: Research assistant, Baldauf lab, CIMeC
- 2021–2022: Thesis project, Baldauf lab, CIMeC
- 2020–2021: Research intern, Neurotech Lab, Donders
- 2019–2022: Master's degree, University of Trento
- 2017: Exchange student, KU Leuven
- 2014–2019: Bachelor's degree, Boğaziçi University