Michael Helde

Michael is a postbaccalaureate research fellow in the Leopold Lab, where he studies naturalistic visual processing in nonhuman primates, with a focus on facial patches, under the mentorship of Dr. Harish Katti. He earned his B.S. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Washington in June 2025 and joined the lab in August 2025. His introduction to neuroscience came through a project with Professor Alexander Dimitrov at Washington State University, investigating cross-modal performance of a neuromorphic algorithm modeled on the mammalian olfactory bulb. A short article based on this work is currently under review for publication.

As an undergraduate, Michael conducted research in the Basso Lab on the role of the superior colliculus in visual decision-making, and later in the Soetedjo/Kojima Lab, where he studied brainstem mechanisms involved in saccade generation. He is broadly interested in visual neuroscience and aims to integrate this interest with a future career in academic medicine through an MD/PhD program.

Publications

Singh A, Farooqui Z, Sattler B, Usua U, Helde M. (2021) Using Machine Learning Optimization to Predict Autism in Toddlers. In Proceedings of the 11th Annual International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management, Singapore, March 7‑11, 2021. IEOM Society International.

Presentations

Helde, M., & Dimitrov, A. (2023, July). A multimodal neuromorphic application to keyword recognition [Conference poster presentation]. Organization of Computational Neuroscience Annual Conference, Leipzig, Germany.