Dr. Ariana Andrei is an Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at Houston Methodist Research Institute and has recently joined as Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University. She earned her B.Sc. and M.Sc. at McGill University studying in the notorious Physiology department, after which she earned a B.F.A. in film from York University in Toronto. Dr. Andrei completed her Ph.D. in Neuroscience at The University of Texas at Houston where she developed combined electrophysiological and optogenetics techniques to causally control neural activity to augment visual perception. Her postdoctoral work targeting cortico-thalamic-cortical circuits earned an NIH K99 award. Research in the Andrei lab focuses on how cortico- thalamic circuitry organizes neural activity throughout the brain and creates the physical substrate for visual perception. Using a systems neuroscience approach, we link neural activity with perceptual reports with the goal of developing novel neuro-prosthetics to restore lost senses.