Lab Members
Principal Investigator
Daniel Aharoni
Principal Investigator
Associate Professor, Department of Neurology, UCLA
Eleanor Leslie Chair in Innovative Brain Research. Affiliated faculty in Bioengineering, the Brain Research Institute, the Neuroscience Interdepartmental Program, and the Integrative Center for Learning and Memory. Ph.D. in Physics, UCLA.
daharoni@mednet.ucla.edu
Project Scientists
Samara Miller-Hecht
Project Scientist
Department of Neurology, UCLA
Miniscope community training, workshops, and user support; hippocampal imaging during social behavior.
Postdoctoral Fellows
Marcel Brosch
Postdoctoral Fellow (2022–present)
Department of Neurology, UCLA
Wireless power and data transfer for fully untethered Miniscopes; long-term neural recording in freely behaving animals.
MBrosch@mednet.ucla.edu
Jonny Saunders
Postdoctoral Fellow (2023–present)
Department of Neurology, UCLA
Open-source software infrastructure for the Miniscope ecosystem — acquisition and streaming-analysis frameworks, data standards, and developer tooling.
jommy@ucla.edu
Krisha Aghi
Postdoctoral Fellow (2025–present)
Department of Neurology, UCLA
Calcium imaging analysis methods, including spike inference and deconvolution benchmarking.
Graduate Students
Federico Sangiuliano Jimka
Graduate Student
Bioengineering, UCLA
Next-generation Miniscope hardware and cross-platform data acquisition.
Hemal Semwal
Graduate Student (2021–present) · DoD NDSEG Fellow
Bioengineering, UCLA
Miniature microscope hardware and firmware for long-term neural-behavioral recording.
semwal@ucla.eduAlumni
Raymond Chang
Ph.D. in Physics, UCLA, 2026
Now at Stripe
Streaming calcium imaging analysis (cala / noob).
Hamid Chorsi
Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, UCLA, 2025
Electrical and Computer Engineering, UCLA
STIMscope — an open-source platform for large field-of-view imaging with patterned optogenetic stimulation at single-cell resolution.
Zhe (Phil) Dong
Postdoctoral Fellow, 2022–2025
Now in industry
Lead developer of the Minian analysis pipeline and the dual-channel Miniscope.
Abasalt Bahrami
Postdoctoral Fellow, 2024–2025
Department of Neurology, UCLA
Yang Liu
M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, UCLA, 2025
Electrical and Computer Engineering, UCLA
Takuya Sasatani
Postdoctoral Fellow, 2022–2023
Now faculty at the University of Tokyo
Wireless power for Miniscopes.
Aparajeeta Guha
Graduate Student in lab, 2022–2023
Electrical and Computer Engineering, UCLA
Changliang Guo
Postdoctoral Fellow, 2019–2021
Now faculty at Peking University
Lead developer of Miniscope-LFOV.