Byron Yu

Professor

• Gerard G. Elia Career Development Professor
• Electrical & Computer Engineering and Biomedical Engineering
• Carnegie Mellon University

Affiliations

Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition
Machine Learning
Neuroscience Institute
Robotics Institute

Contact

Email:
Office:	B204 Hamerschlag Hall Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213
	(412) 268-9658 (tel) (412) 268-6345 (fax)

News briefs

(for more, click here)

• Sep 2025: “Robustness of working memory to prefrontal cortex microstimulation” published in Journal of Neuroscience.
• Sep 2025: “Fast multi-group Gaussian process factor models” published in Neural Computation.
• Feb 2025: “Dynamical constraints on neural population activity” published as cover article in Nature Neuroscience.
  
• Dec 2024: “MiSO: Optimizing brain stimulation to create neural activity states” published at NeurIPS.
• Oct 2024: “A neural basis of choking under pressure” published in Neuron.
• Sep 2024: “Automated customization of large-scale spiking network models to neuronal population activity” published in Nature Computational Science.
• Mar 2024: “Learning leaves a memory trace in motor cortex” published in Current Biology.
• Feb 2024: Asma Motiwala gives talk at Cosyne on "Probing movement preparation dynamics using BCI-based causal perturbations".
• Jan 2024: “Motor cortex retains and reorients neural dynamics during motor imagery” published in Nature Human Behaviour.
• Dec 2023: “Uncovering motifs of concurrent signaling across multiple neuronal populations” published at NeurIPS.
• Dec 2023: Shenghao Wu receives PhD in joint Program in Neural Computation and Machine Learning.
• Oct 2023: Asma Motiwala named a Swartz Foundation Fellow for Theory in Neuroscience.
• Oct 2023: Yuki Minai receives Carnegie Prize Student Fellowship.
• Aug 2023: Tze Hui Koh receives PhD in BME.
• Jun 2023: Hillary Wehry receives PhD in Neural Computation.
• May 2023: Darby Losey receives PhD in joint Program in Neural Computation and Machine Learning.
• Apr 2023: Evren Gokcen receives PhD in ECE.
• Mar 2023: A tribute in memory of Krishna Shenoy.
• Jan 2023: “Dimensionality reduction of calcium-imaged neuronal population activity” published in Nature Computational Science.
• Dec 2022: “Tracking momentary fluctuations in human attention with a cognitive brain-machine interface” published in Communications Biology.
• Aug 2022: “Disentangling the flow of signals between populations of neurons” published in Nature Computational Science.
• Jun 2022: Congratulations to Matthew Golub who will start as Assistant Professor at University of Washington in Fall 2022.
• Jun 2022: Congratulations to Benjamin Cowley who will start as Assistant Professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Fall 2022.
• Mar 2022: “Feedforward and feedback interactions between visual cortical areas use different population activity patterns” published in Nature Communications.
• Dec 2021: Akash Umakantha receives PhD in joint Program in Neural Computation and Machine Learning.
• Oct 2021: “How learning unfolds in the brain: toward an optimization view” published in Neuron.
• Sep 2021: “A stable population code for attention in prefrontal cortex leads a dynamic attention code in visual cortex” published in Journal of Neuroscience.
• Jul 2021: “Bridging neuronal correlations and dimensionality reduction” published in Neuron.
• Mar 2021: Jay Hennig receives PhD in joint Program in Neural Computation and Machine Learning.
• Mar 2021: “Learning is shaped by abrupt changes in neural engagement” published in Nature Neuroscience.
• Mar 2021: Krishna Shenoy and Byron Yu co-author an entirely new chapter on "Brain-Machine Interfaces" in the 6th edition of Principles of Neural Science.
• Feb 2021: Byron Yu elected Fellow of American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).
• Nov 2020: “Statistical methods for dissecting interactions between brain areas” published in Current Opinion in Neurobiology.
• Nov 2020: Evren Gokcen receives Philip and Marsha Dowd Graduate Student Fellowship.
• Sep 2020: Book chapter on “Intracortical brain-machine interfaces” published in Neural Engineering.
• Aug 2020: Ryan Williamson receives PhD in joint Program in Neural Computation and Machine Learning.
• Aug 2020: “Slow drift of neural activity as a signature of impulsivity in macaque visual and prefrontal cortex” published in Neuron.
• Aug 2020: “Principles of corticocortical communication: proposed schemes and design considerations” published in Trends in Neurosciences.
• Apr 2020: “Stabilization of a brain-computer interface via the alignment of low-dimensional spaces of neural activity” published in Nature Biomedical Engineering.
• Feb 2020: Evren Gokcen gives talk at Cosyne on "Dissecting feedforward and feedback interactions between populations of neurons".
• Feb 2020: Darby Losey gives talk at Cosyne on "Evidence of a memory trace in motor cortex after short‐term learning".
• July 2019: “New neural activity patterns emerge with long-term learning” published in PNAS.
• Jun 2019: Joao Semedo receives CNBC Outstanding Paper Award (Strick Prize).
• Jun 2019: Jay Hennig receives CNBC Outstanding Paper Award (McClelland Prize).
• May 2019: Joao Semedo receives A.G. Milnes Award for most outstanding thesis in ECE.
• Apr 2019: “Cortical areas interact through a communication subspace” published in Neuron.
• Jan 2019: “Bridging large-scale neuronal recordings and large-scale network models using dimensionality reduction” published in Current Opinion in Neurobiology.
• Oct 2018: “Distinct population codes for attention in the absence and presence of visual stimulation” published in Nature Communications.
• Oct 2018: Jay Hennig receives Andrew Carnegie Prize in Mind and Brain Sciences Fellowship.
• Sep 2018: Evren Gokcen receives CMU BrainHub Presidential Fellowship.
• Sep 2018: “Constraints on neural redundancy” published in eLife.
• May 2018: Joao Semedo receives PhD in ECE.
• May 2018: Benjamin Cowley receives PhD in ML.
• Mar 2018: “Learning by neural reassociation” published in Nature Neuroscience.
• Mar 2018: “Computational neuroscience: mathematical and statistical perspectives” published in Annual Review of Statistics and Its Application.
• Dec 2017: “Adaptive stimulus selection for optimizing neural population responses” published at NIPS.
• Aug 2017: “A path to understanding how motor cortex influences muscle activity” (Previews) published in Neuron.
• Aug 2017: “Population activity structure of excitatory and inhibitory neurons” published in PLoS One.
• Apr 2017: “Distance covariance analysis” published at AISTATS.
• Mar 2017: Rudina Morina receives Fulbright Scholarship.
• Feb 2017: Byron Yu receives the Gerard G. Elia Career Development Professorship in Engineering.
• Dec 2016: “Stimulus-driven population activity patterns in macaque primary visual cortex” published in PLoS Computational Biology.
• Dec 2016: “Scaling properties of dimensionality reduction for neural populations and network models” published in PLoS Computational Biology.
• Dec 2016: Joao Semedo receives Bertucci Graduate Fellowship.
• Jul 2016: Ben Cowley receives Richard King Mellon Foundation Presidential Fellowship in the Life Sciences.
• May 2016: Sean Bittner receives ECE Frank J. Marshall Scholar Award for outstanding scholastic and research achievement.
• Apr 2016: “Fault tolerance in the brain” (News & Views) published in Nature.
• Jan 2016: “Brain–computer interfaces for dissecting cognitive processes underlying sensorimotor control” published in Current Opinion in Neurobiology.
• Dec 2015: “Internal models for interpreting neural population activity during sensorimotor control” published in eLife.
• Sep 2015: William Bishop receives PhD in ML.
• Aug 2015: “Extracting low-dimensional latent structure from time series in the presence of delays” published in Neural Computation.
• May 2015: Matthew Golub receives PhD and A.G. Milnes Award for most outstanding thesis in ECE.
• Jan 2015: “Brain-computer interface control along instructed paths” published in Journal of Neural Engineering.
• Nov 2014: "Deterministic symmetric positive semidefinite matrix completion" published at NIPS.
• Nov 2014: "Extracting latent structure from multiple interacting neural populations" published at NIPS.
• Nov 2014: Patrick Sadtler receives PhD in BioE.
• Oct 2014: Research highlighted in Nature Reviews Neuroscience "Putting limits on learning".
• Aug 2014: "Neural constraints on learning" published as cover article in Nature.
  
• Aug 2014: "Dimensionality reduction for large-scale neural recordings" published in Nature Neuroscience.
• Jul 2014: "Motor cortical control of movement speed with implications for brain-machine interface control" published in Journal of Neurophysiology.
• May 2014: "Shedding light on learning" (News & Views) published in Nature Neuroscience.
• Feb 2014: Patrick Sadtler gives talk at Cosyne on "Neural constraints on learning".
• Feb 2014: "Self-recalibrating classifiers for intracortical brain computer interfaces" published in Journal of Neural Engineering.
• Dec 2013: Matthew Golub receives Bertucci Graduate Fellowship.
• Nov 2013: DataHigh software available here.
• Nov 2013: "DataHigh: graphical user interface for visualizing and interacting with high-dimensional neural activity" published in Journal of Neural Engineering.