Faculty Profile
Alexandro Diaz Ramirez, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Physiology and Pharmacology
Dr. Alexandro Ramirez is an Assistant Professor in the department of Physiology and Pharmacology. He received his PhD in Neurobiology and Behavior at Columbia University, where he focused on the application and analysis of statistical methods to understand how the brain encodes sensory information. Dr. Ramirez completed his postdoctoral training at Weill Cornell Medicine, where he studied oculomotor brainstem neurons involved in memory and decision-making.
A fated introduction to Neurobiology
Dr. Ramirez grew up in Riverside, CA until the age of 14 when his family moved to San Antonio, TX. Both of his parents have roots in Mexico but only his mother grew up there. In high school, Ramirez became enamored in Physics and decided to study the topic in college at the University of Texas, Austin where he received a B.S. in Physics. ​
Dr. Ramirez’s path to Neurobiology was less than traditional and is a testament to how unrelated experiences can lead to lifelong passions. In his junior year at UT Austin, he took a five-month hiatus from his studies to live in Paris, France and study the French language. While his time in Paris didn’t lead to fluency in French, he has that trip to thank for his introduction to Neurobiology. Two months into his journey, he found himself in need of some pocket money and found a job as a general science tutor for a home-schooled American boy whose family was living in France. One day the boy asked if the next lesson could be on the brain, and this led Dr. Ramirez to read an introductory textbook in Neuroscience. From there, he was hooked on the subject and got a Ph.D. in Neurobiology and Behavior from Columbia University (followed by a postdoc at Weill Cornell Medicine.
Research focus
Dr. Ramirez became fascinated by how individual cells in the brain interact to form circuits that encode information, make decisions and control behavior. His lab’s research focuses on the mechanisms neural circuits use to make decisions that initiate movement. They are interested in quantifying how the nervous system decides to move, particularly in the case of exploratory behavior where the decision can be made without external cues and the motivation to act is difficult to characterize.
Towards this end, the lab uses the latest techniques for observing and manipulating individual neurons. They are interested in discovering which cells in the larval zebrafish brain determine when the fish will move its eyes during spontaneous, exploratory behavior and how those cells become active. Dr. Ramirez hopes this work will eventually illuminate basic circuit motifs that are used across the animal kingdom that govern how the nervous system makes decisions and that can provide insight into treatments when decision-making capacities go amiss.
Mentorship and navigating uncertainty in research
Dr. Ramirez feels fortunate to have found multiple mentors who have inspired him to pursue a scientific career researching how the brain operates. He explained that their enthusiasm for understanding the natural world influenced him to do the same and he hopes to pass on this passion to his students. His studies in neural circuits and behavior led to his focus on decision-making and movement. Movement is the ultimate output of the brain and is often the only window into how the brain thinks and processes information. He hopes that an understanding of movement initiation will bring us one step closer to understanding the complex cognitive processes the nervous system is capable of.
The largest challenge Dr. Ramirez shared that he’s faced as a scientist, is navigating the uncertainty that is inherent in the research process. It is often unclear which questions are worth studying, which approaches can answer them and which can get funded. ​He manages the frustration that this uncertainty can produce by choosing problems that are fun to think about while maintaining an active life outside the lab. His advice to trainees pursuing research is to do the same: find mentors who make research fun and keep a healthy work-life balance. His favorite activity outside the lab these days is strolling around New York City with his daughter who is about to turn two.