Omar Ahmed, Ph.D.

Dr. Omar Ahmed received both his undergraduate and Ph.D. degrees in Neuroscience from Brown University. He then worked with epilepsy patients at Massachusetts General Hospital during his postdoctoral work, before joining the faculty at the University of Michigan as an Assistant Professor. His primary appointment is in the Dept. of Psychology (Behavioral Neuroscience area), and he is affiliated with the Dept. of Biomedical Engineering, the Neuroscience Graduate Program and the Kresge Hearing Research Institute.

The Ahmed lab studies how space, time and speed are encoded in the brain, including the role of the vestibular system in spatial navigation. In parallel, we are engineering all-optical and autonomous closed-loop techniques that target very specific subsets of neurons. We use a range of methods in our lab. In addition to electrophysiology in rodents and humans, we use imaging and photoactivation techniques to record and alter neuronal activity as rodents navigate custom-designed virtual reality environments. Finally, we work on novel computational techniques to model and analyze our immensely large electrophysiology and imaging datasets to better understand how specific behaviors are encoded by neural circuits.