Hi, I’m Dilay! I’m currently a first-year PhD student in the Adaptive Decisions Lab led by Prof Abhishek Banerjee at the University of Oxford as a Clarendon Scholar.
I moved to the UK in late 2019 for my undergraduate studies; I went to UCL for psychology and language sciences (2019-2023), then Imperial for AI (2023-2024), before landing in Oxford in September 2024. I first joined Keble College in September 2024 for my MSc in Neuroscience, and then joined The Queen’s College a year later to take up a PhD funding position. I am French with Turkish heritage; I obtained my French Scientific Baccalaureate in Paris in 2019.
In my free time, I like writing; I mostly write short-form prose, and sometimes poetry. Nothing out in the world too publicly at the moment!
🌜 PhD Introduction
I am interested in how neural circuits support adaptive decision-making. My work combines behavioural analysis, neural data processing, and computational modelling to understand how patterns of brain activity relate to learning, action selection, and changes in behaviour over time. I develop reproducible analysis pipelines for mouse behavioural and neural datasets, and use models that take behaviour as structured input, including trial-resolution task histories, to predict future choices and link population-level neural activity to task structure and behavioural strategy.
More broadly, I am interested in using computational approaches to bridge experimental neuroscience, cognition, and intelligent behaviour.
🌝 Location
Current: Oxford, UK
Affiliation: The Queen’s College and the Department of Pharmacology, Oxford