About

Hello! I'm Arefeh Sherafati. I'm a scientist working at the intersection of physics, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence.

I'm currently a Research Scientist at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, where I develop optical neuroimaging methods to study brain function in children with serious and complex conditions. I also advise early-stage neurotechnology and digital-health startups on scientific strategy, AI product development, and turning research into fundable, clinically relevant roadmaps.

Alongside my research, I mentor students and early-career scientists, one-on-one and in small groups, in computational neuroscience, AI, and data science, helping them design real research projects and publish peer-reviewed papers.

Previously, I completed postdoctoral training at the University of California, San Francisco, where I led a collaboration with the Allen Institute for Brain Science to open-source the largest calcium-imaging dataset to date from the mouse primary visual cortex. I was also a 2023 Grand Prize Runner-Up in the Vesuvius Challenge, using deep learning to help read ancient Herculaneum scrolls.

Before that, I earned my Ph.D. in physics and completed two years of postdoctoral training at Washington University in St. Louis, developing computational methods for a novel neurotechnology called high-density diffuse optical tomography (HD-DOT). Earlier, I obtained an M.S. in gravitational physics.