Dhanya Parameshwaran, Ph.D.
Senior Scientist
Dhanya’s combined interest in solving socioeconomic challenges and understanding the brain led to the pioneering work behind the Human Brain Diversity Project where she continues to build deep insights into the EEG signal and its relationship to environment and human outcomes.
Dhanya has worked across various neural systems and species from rats to humans studying electrical activity of the brain from spiking activity in CA1 pyramidal neuronal networks to LFP, ECoGand EEG signals. She has a broad computational background with substantial experience in signal processing and machine learning, as well as extensive programming experience in MATLAB, R, and Python. Previously, as a Data Scientist for Madura Microfinance in India, she developed analytical models to predict the economic success of informal rural economies.
Dhanya is also co-Founder of Kabbadi Adda, an active organizer of the Kabbadi leagues in India.
Dhanya has a B.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras in Aerospace Engineering and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the National Center for Biological Sciences (NCBS), TIFR in India.
“The more we find out about the brain, the more uncharted the science seems. Often in neuroscience, we generalize our findings to humanity as a whole based on information from a few select individuals chosen for research. I am interested in the differences across individuals as opposed to the similarities. At Sapien Labs, I get an opportunity to look at large-scale data from India, US, Sudan, Argentina and beyond. Being able to connect the evolution of the brain to the evolution of man is a question I am fascinated by. At Sapien Labs I am involved in building tools to analyze EEG data quickly and arrive at meaningful research outcomes. Simplifying EEG analysis and being able to build EEG tools that are deployed for everyone to use on a large scale, agnostic to the question, is something I am keen to contribute.”