Dr. Armin Lak

Biography

Armin Lak is an Associate Professor in Neuroscience at the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics at the University of Oxford. He is also a Wellcome Trust Henry Dale Fellow and a St John's College Fellow. His research aims to gain a quantitative circuit-level understanding of the neuronal mechanisms that underlie learning and decision-making. Armin employs a multi-disciplinary approach that includes high-count electrophysiology, cell type-specific multiphoton imaging, optogenetic manipulations, and highly-controlled behavioral tasks in mice, as well as computational modeling. His research has been supported by funding from the European Research Council and Wellcome Trust. He completed his PhD in neuroscience at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Wolfram Schultz, focusing on the roles of midbrain dopamine neurons in economic decision-making. Additionally, he has served as a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow, working with Matteo Carandini, Kenneth Harris, and Adam Kepecs at University College London and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. His work integrates neuronal circuit tools with novel behavioral and computational methods to investigate the roles that frontal cortex dopamine neurons play in perceptual and economic decisions.

Research Interests