Anshuman Sabath

Hello! I am Anshuman Sabath, a PhD Candidate (3rd year) in Biomedical Engineering at Duke University advised by Timothy Dunn. I am broadly interested in Computational Neuroscience. My PhD research is focussed on developing methods for precise quantification of affect in non-human intelligences (lab animals and “machines”). At the Dunn Lab I am developing computer vision based tools to non-invasively read out affective states of freely behaving mice, alongside experimenting with foundation models(LLMs) for biologically faithful evidence of affect.

Before starting the PhD program, I had worked 2+ years in server-side software engineering for Oracle, and 1+ year at the Dunn Lab building a multi-view multimodal behavior capture rig and finetuning pose-tracking models (DANNCE).

Outside of work, Run Club and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu classes claim most of my active time.

My research interests:

1. Computational
   1. Multi-scale, multi-view 3D motion tracking of rodents
   2. Unsupervised behavior quantification using TDA and high-dimensional statistics
   3. Efficient tensor data processing in the representation space
   4. Multimodal behavior characterization (Calcium recordings + 3D behavior)
   5. Mechanistic interpretability of foundation model finetunes grounded in biology
2. Biological
   1. Developing open-field assays for non-invasive affect readouts
   2. Isolating circuits implicated in affective processes using depression and autism mice models

Beyond research, I am also passionate about a few causes:

1. Open Science and addressing the reproducibility crisis (Co-Founder, Liberata)
2. Supporting graduate education for FGLI students (Co-President, DukeF1RSTS)