Official Story
Cristina Savin received her PhD from Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, after doing theoretical work on the computational roles of different forms of plasticity in the group of Jochen Triesch at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies. She then moved to Cambridge University for a postdoc with Mate Lengyel, followed by a short research visit at Ecole Normale Superiore in Paris in the group of Sophie Deneve, and an independent research fellowship at IST Austria, working in collaboration with Gasper Tkacik and Joszef Csicsvari. Since 2017 she has been an Assistant Professor in the Center for Neural Science and the Center for Data Science at NYU. Her research sits at the intersection between neuroscience and machine learning, with a focus on learning at the level of circuits. Her group develops both theory and new data analysis tools, in collaboration with several experimental partners. Cristina has also recently started an industry collaboration centered on nervous system computer interfaces for medical applications.
Unofficial Story
Growing up in a small town in Transylvania, Cristina's vision of possible career options was quite narrow. As someone who excelled academically but felt no passion for any particular subject (beyond reading indiscriminately and painting), she toyed with the idea of going to medical school before finally ending up, almost by chance, as a CS major in high-school and then at the Technical University in Cluj-Napoca. There, she fell in love with both CS and university life; she continued to be top of the class while still painting and generally doing more things that should realistically fit in 24 hours. In her third year, Cristina briefly worked in industry as a software engineer, which helped confirm her choice of staying in academia. In Romania, this would usually mean staying on at the same university and working slowly through the ranks towards a permanent position. Her Dean, one of Cristina's early mentors, pushed her to go abroad for her PhD instead. After some complicated family negotiations, Cristina accepted a PhD position in Frankfurt, working with Jochen Triesch on computational roles of plasticity. Despite struggling with living abroad for the first time and a rather unwelcoming environment, research proceeded relatively smoothly, resulting in several publications and one contributed Cosyne talk. She handed in her thesis after three and a half years. While the questions she was asking during her PhD remained prominent in her mind, by the end of her stay in Frankfurt she was feeling dissatisfied with the methodology. Prompted by a collaboration with Joerg Luecke, at the time a postdoc at the same institute, she started shifting towards machine learning based approaches to studying brain computation. She landed her dream postdoc in Cambridge working in the lab of Mate Lengyel in collaboration with Peter Dayan. It quickly became apparent that she had a great deal to learn, but she persevered and managed to develop several interesting ideas, with corresponding publications. While external validation that she was on the right track was hard to come by, she did manage to get a selective NIPS talk, and after two and a half years she felt she was in a good position to go back on the job market. She had multiple offers, but eventually decided on an independent research fellowship in Vienna as she wanted to focus more on data analysis. Cristina deferred the start date to spend some time in Paris in the lab of Sophie Deneve working on what became one of her first independent lines of research (which brought another NIPS spotlight and a second Cosyne talk). In Vienna, she sat for the first time in an experimental lab and quickly discovered that none of the neuroscientists around were interested in talking to her. It took a few months of participating in journal clubs and research talks until finally someone came to her with a question, and she finally got a stamp of approval when one of her suggestions turned into an actual experiment. In parallel, Cristina started looking into faculty jobs, initially restricting the search to Europe but eventually also sending a few applications in the US, despite strong family opposition. She struggled, and it took a while before starting to get invited for interviews; even longer for an actual offer to materialize. In retrospect, she had very little idea what she was doing and was too proud/embarrassed to ask for help. After the first few rejections, she started doubting that she belonged in academia at all. Fortunately, chance intervened. At the point when she was ready to give up, she received an email encouraging her to apply for a joint CNS-CDS position at NYU. Long story short, she eventually was offered the job. Getting started was not easy, but things are starting to come together thanks to some rather amazing students. Cristina is excited about starting several new collaborations and developing two new grad courses. She looks forward to the challenges ahead.