Curriculum Vitae

Sean X. Luo

Center for Theoretical Neuroscience

NYSPI Kolb Annex, RM772

1051 Riverside Drive, Unit 87

Phone: (212) 543-5671

Fax: (212) 543-5074    

Education

Medical - Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, New York

09/2003 - 05/2010 

M.D./Ph.D., 05/2010

Graduate - Columbia University, New York, NY

Neuroscience (Computational)

09/2003 - 05/2010 

M.D./Ph.D., 05/2010

Undergraduate - University of Chicago, Chicago, IL

Physics and Mathematics (double major)

09/1999 - 06/2003 

B.A., with Honors 06/2003

Membership and Honorary/Professional Societies

Society for Neuroscience 2007-2009;

American Physician Scientist Association 2003-current;

American Medical Student Association 2003-current;

Sigma Chi 2003-current

Medical Honors / Awards

NIH MSTP Grant 2006-2008

Examinations

USMLE Step 1   06/2005

USMLE Step 2   12/2009

Work Experience

01/2008 - 06/2008   

Columbia University, Office of STV, New York

STV Fellow

Fellow, Office of Science and Technology Ventures Assessment and research of emerging technologies from Columbia faculties, primarily in biotechnology and biopharma sectors.  Patent search and marketing brief writing.

09/2006 - 06/2007   

Columbia University, Office of Outreach, New York

SPREP teacher

Teacher and course director, introductory neuroscience course for high school students Saturday enrichment program for the underrepresented minority youth

Volunteer Experience

01/ 2006 - 05/2006    

Columbia University, Department of Biology, New York

Teaching assistant, Rafael Yuste, Ph.D.

Teaching assistant for the systems neuroscience course

10/ 2003 - 06/2004    

Physicians for Human Rights, New York

Member of the Executive Committee

Organized meetings, lectures and events for the PHR chapter at Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons

Research Experience

09/2005 - 12/2008 

Columbia University, Department of Neuroscience, New York

Research Assistant, Larry Abbott, Ph.D. and Richard Axel, M.D.

Thesis research

06/2002 - 09/2002  

Neuropsychiatric Institute, UCLA, California

Research Assistant, Jonathan Monck, Ph.D.

UCLA Summer Neuroengineering Fellowship Imaging of calcium transients in neuroendocrine cells

06/2001 - 09/2001  

McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts

Research Assistant, Steven Matthysse, Ph.D.

Stanley Foundation Summer Research Fellowship at the Psychological Research Laboratory Modeling hippocampal cellular network using GENESIS

05/2001 - 06/2003  

University of Chicago, Department of Neurology, Illinois

Research Assistant, Kurt Hecox, M.D., Ph.D.

Undergraduate work study/honors thesis research Building algorithms of source localization of EEG signals in real time with Laplacian minimization

05/2000 - 06/2001  

University of Chicago, HHMI, Illinois

Research Assistant, Philip Ulinski, Ph.D.

HHMI Summer Research Fellowship Modeling visual cortical inhibitory cells in turtles

Publications

Peer Reviewed Journal Articles/Abstracts

Abbott LF, Luo SX. A step toward optimal coding in olfaction. Nat. Neurosci. 2007 Nov; 10(11): 1342-3. Cited in PubMed; PMID: 17965649.

Datta SR, Vasconcelos ML, Ruta V, Luo S, Wong A, Demir E, Flores J, Balonze K, Dickson BJ, Axel R.. The Drosophila pheromone cVA activates a sexually dimorphic neural circuit. Nature. 2008 Mar; 452(7186): 473-7. Cited in PubMed; PMID: 18305480.

Wang W, Luo S, Ghosh BK, Ulinski PS.. Generation of the receptive fields of subpial cells in turtle visual cortex. J. Integr. Neurosci. 2006 Dec; 5(4): 561-93. Cited in PubMed; PMID: 17245823.

Peer Reviewed Journal Articles/Abstracts(Other than Published)

Luo SX, Axel R, Abbott LF. Generating sparse and selective third-order responses in the olfactory system of the fly: the role of normalization and decorrelation. Neuron. Publication Status: Submitted.

Poster Presentation

Luo SX, Axel R, Abbott LF. (2008, September). Representational Compression and Olfactory Discrimination in the Fly. Poster presented at: Gordon Conference on Statistics of Natural Stimuli; Barga, Italy.

Luo SX, Axel R, Abbott LF. (2007, June). Olfactory Coding and Discrimination in Drosophila. Poster presented at: Gordon Conference on Neurocircuits; Newport, RI.

Oral Presentation

Luo SX, Axel R, Abbott LF. (2007, February). Modeling Olfactory Discrimination in Drosophila. Oral Presentation presented at: Computation and Systems Neuroscience (COSYNE); Salt Lake City, UT.

Luo SX, Axel R, Abbott LF. (2006, November). Modeling Olfactory Discrimination in Drosophila. Oral Presentation presented at: Engineering Principles in Biological Systems, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; Cold Spring Harbor, NY.

Luo SX, Axel R, Abbott LF. (2006, September). Decorrelation in the olfactory system of Drosophila. Oral Presentation presented at: Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Conference; London, United Kingdom.

Luo SX, Axel R, Abbott LF. (2006, August). Decorrelation in the olfactory system of Drosophila. Oral Presentation presented at: Schwartz Computational Neuroscience Meeting; New York, NY.

Hobbies & Interests

Piano, classical and jazz; 

Music composition and theory, contemporary classical music; 

Literary criticism, theory, travel literature, postcolonialism, multiculturalism, film theory, visual language and relations to psychoanalysis; 

Media and internet studies, science and technology studies; 

Health care policy, welfare economics, quantitative social sciences; 

Tennis, weight lifting, running

Language Fluency (Other than English)

Chinese (Mandarin), full proficiency

Awards/Accomplishments

NIH MSTP Training Grant 2002-2008

UCLA Neuroengineering Fellowship, 2002; HHMI Summer Research Award, 2000; University of Chicago College Gift Aid, 1999; Intel International Science Fair, Fourth Place, 1999