Ni Ji

Navigational behavior contributes critically to an organism’s ability to locate food, mate, suitable habitat while avoiding danger. Diverse species, from bacteria to mammals, have evolved ingenious ways to navigate a complex, volatile and often uncertain world. Some of these tactics, such as the biased random walk observed in various taxis behaviors, reflect convergent computational principles; others such as the dessert ants’ use of polarized light to maintain their bearings, demonstrate the animals’ remarkable ability to extract salient features from the environment to guide behavior. Uncovering the algorithms and neural implementations behind nature’s robust navigational strategies could pave the way towards building artificial systems that can safely and autonomously roam the world.

With the above motivations, our lab aims to:

1) Combine quantitative measurements with machine learning and statistical modeling to reveal the computational basis of diverse navigational behaviors;

2) By imaging, manipulating , analyzing and modeling brain-wide neural activity during navigation, elucidate the neural circuitry that enable robust and flexible navigation in complex environments;

3) By comparing navigational behavior across species, and between animals and artificial agents, distill the algorithmic principles underlying robust and flexible navigation.  

Our group takes a highly interdisciplinary approach to unravel the algorithmic basis of animal navigation. Whether you are an experimentalist or a theorist, a biologist, a physicist, a mathematician or an engineer, your intellectual contribution can be an asset to the group.

Interested students and scholars are welcome to contact niji@cibr.ac.cn to discuss positions at all levels (postdoc/senior scientist, Ph.D. trainee, technical staff, and undergraduate or master’s intern).

2020    Women in Science Travel (WIST) Fund

2020   Computational and Systems Neuroscience (COSYNE) Meeting Travel Award

2017-2019    Charles A. King Trust Postdoctoral Fellowship

2016-2017    JFDP Postdoctoral Fellowship

2015    Marine Biological Laboratory Computational Image Analysis Course Travel Award

2007-2011    Singleton Fellowship

2010    Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Travel Award

2007-2009    Berea College Graduate Study Grant

2003-2007    Berea College Full Scholarship

Selected publications: (* denotes equal contribution)

1.Chen, J., An, J., Liu, Y., Ji, N. (2025). Brain Bandit: A Biologically Grounded Neural Network for Efficient Control of Exploration. ICLR 2025.

2. Ji, N., Madan, G.K., Fabre, G.I., Dayan, A., Baker, C.M., Kramer, T.S., Nwabudike, I, Flavell, S.W. (2021). A neural circuit for flexible control of persistent behavior states. eLife 2021;10:e62889.

3. Ji, N., Venkatachalam, V., Rodgers, H.D., Lim, M., Kawano, T., Clark, C.M., Alkema, M.J.*, Zhen, M.*, Samuel, A.D.T.* (2021). Corollary discharge promotes a sustained motor state in a neural circuit for navigation. eLife 2021;10:e68848.

4. Ji, N. and Flavell S.W. (2017) Hydra: Imaging nerve nets in action. Current Biology 27(8): R294-295.

5. Venkatachalam, V.*, Ji, N.*, Wang, X., Mitchell, J., Klein, M., Tabone, C., Clark, C. M., Greenwood, J.S.F., Chisholm, A., Srinivasan, J., Alkema, M.J., Zhen, M., Samuel, A.D.T. (2016). Pan-neuronal imaging in roaming animals. PNAS 113(8): E1082-1088.

6. Ji, N.*, Middelkoop, T.C.*, Mentink, R.A., Betist, M.C., Tonegawa, S., Mooijman, D., Korswagen, H.C., van Oudenaarden, A. (2013) Feedback control of gene expression variability in the Caenorhabditis elegans Wnt pathway. Cell 155(4):869-80.  

7. Tan, R.Z., Ji, N., Mentink, R., Korswagen, H.C., van Oudenaarden, A. (2013) Deconvolving the roles of Wnt ligands and receptors in sensing and amplification. Molecular Systems Biology 9:631.

8. Ji, N. and van Oudenaarden, A. (2012) Single molecule fluorescent in situ hybridization (smFISH) of C. elegans Worms and Embryos. WormBook, ed. The C. elegans Research Community, WormBook, doi/10.1895/wormbook.1.153.1, http://www.wormbook.org.

9. Scott, B.B., Gardner, T., Ji, N., Fee, M.S. Lois, C. (2012) Wandering neuronal migration in the postnatal vertebrate forebrain. Journal of Neuroscience 32:1436-46.