Bio-X Affiliated Faculty

Dr. Saggar is a computational neuroscientist and currently focuses on understanding brain dynamics at rest as well as during learning. The overarching goal of Dr. Saggar's research is to develop reliable computational methods that will allow for characterizing and modeling temporal dynamics of brain activity, without averaging data in either space or time. He strongly believes that the spatiotemporal richness in brain activity might hold the key to finding the person- and disorder-centric biomarkers. Funded by a career development award (K99/R00; NIMH) and a young investigator award (NARSAD; Brain & Behavior Foundation), Dr. Saggar is currently developing methods to model the temporal dynamics of brain activity in individuals with fragile X syndrome and healthy controls. The application of computational modeling to neuroscience and psychiatry is nascent in its development but holds significant promise to positively affect public health. Dr. Saggar has a strong interdisciplinary background in (1) computational sciences, (2) neuroscience as well as (3) psychiatry. Integrating neuroscience, psychiatry, and mathematical modeling represents the new frontier in applications and analysis of large neuroimaging datasets and has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of dynamical brain organization in healthy controls and in individuals with psychiatric disorders.