Brian DePasquale

Brian DePasquale, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, and a Hariri Institute Faculty Affiliate (2023) at Boston University.

As Director of the Artificial and Biological Intelligence Laboratory, he develops mathematical models, applying data-driven and theoretical methods, to understand how populations of neurons perform computations to produce behavior. The lab collaborates with experimental neuroscientists to develop tailored machine learning models of neural activity to identify the algorithms that drive behaviors such as decision-making or movement. They also construct and analyze artificial neural network models to understand how their structure gives rise to analogous computations and other functional features observed in biological neural circuits. His lab also makes its computational methods openly available, with fully documented, reusable code that allows other researchers to reproduce and extend their work.

DePasquale completed his postdoctoral research at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, working with Carlos Brody and Jonathan Pillow on latent variable models of evidence accumulation. He completed his PhD at Columbia University, working with Larry Abbott to develop methods for training recurrent neural networks, and with Mark Churchland to connect these models conceptually to statistical models of low-dimensional dynamics applied to data. Before that he studied the basal ganglia in the laboratory of Ann Graybiel at MIT and completed by BS in physics at Fordham University.

His work has appeared in leading journals including Neuron and Nature Neuroscience, as well as top machine learning venues such as the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR). He received a Sloan Research Fellowship (2026) and in 2025, received the inaugural Scialog: Neurobiology and Changing Ecosystems (NCE) award, the Boston University College of Engineering Dean’s Catalyst Award, a Hariri Institute Junior Faculty Fellowship and a Computing & Data Sciences Faculty Fellowship.

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