Dr Bhargav Teja Nallapu
Name:
Dr Bhargav Teja Nallapu
Job title:
Postdoctoral Researcher
Place of work / study:
Dept. of Neurology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York
Area of Research:
Disease Progression Modelling in Alzheimer’s Disease, Diagnostic tools for Neurogenerative diseases such as Dementia, (previously) Computational Modelling of Executive function and Biological Reinforcement Learning
How is your work funded?
My work is supported in part by grants (of my supervisors Dr. Ezzati – A.E, and Dr. Lipton – R.B.L) from the National Institute of Health (NIA K23 AG063993, A.E.; 2PO1 AG003949, R.B.L); the Alzheimer’s Association (2019-AACSF-641329; A.E.); Cure Alzheimer Fund (A.E. & R.B.L.), the Leonard and Sylvia Marx Foundation (R.B.L.).
Tell us a little about yourself:
I am a software engineer-turned-researcher in computational neuroscience. I enjoy working with data as much as I enjoy theorizing on black (or white) board for hours about what happens across prefrontal cortex when we are trying to choose between multiple options.
Tell us a fun fact about yourself:
I ran 2 half-marathons but I cannot swim a 25m lap without a break, that too in the last lane (to hold the wall, and I don’t enter the pool with kids jumping and splashing water around).
Why did you choose to work in dementia?
Understanding brain involves so many fields working together. It is a unique opportunity to contribute to a research field where I get to apply my skills as well as learn from various other fields – while trying to figure out how brain works both in disease and in health. I believe both have great implications for population health as well as advancement of other fields like Artificial Intelligence [1] and Machine Learning.
What single piece of advice would you give to an early career researcher?
I am early career researcher myself, so please, drop me a message with your advice. If you insist, I’d say, just reach out with a cold email to those groups whose amazing research you admire and would like to be part of – you might grab a chance to collaborate with them.
What book are you reading right now? Would you recommend it?
An enquiry concerning human understanding, Hume [2] (translation). Yes, if you like the idea of reading 4 pages, close the book and contemplate!