The Fiore Lab is part of the Center for Computational Psychiatry, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, in New York City. It was established on April 1st 2023 by PI Vincenzo G. Fiore, with start up funds from the Department of Psychiatry and the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai.
The Fiore Lab also goes by the name Computational Psychiatry of Unstable Neural Kinetics Lab. (Comp-PUNK) since summer 2024, after an extensive and unnecessary use of LLMs for the generation of an esoteric lab logo, which combines multiple symbols related to Neuroscience, computational psychiatry and Mediterranean medieval architecture (just because). Can you identify at least 8 of these symbols?
Below some essential information about the current and past members of the lab.
Principal Investigator
Vincenzo G. Fiore, PhD
Vincenzo holds the position of Assistant Professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS), department of Psychiatry. He is specialised in methods for computational psychiatry, with a specific focus on decision-making in healthy and clinical populations. Dr. Fiore graduated from the Università degli studi di Siena (IT), with a major in cognitive science, he obtained a Master of Science by research in philosophy of mind at the University of Edinburgh (UK) and a PhD in psychobiology and psychopharmacology from the Sapienza, Università di Roma (IT). His research interests include: neural, reinforcement learning and Bayesian computational models of healthy and aberrant behaviour in human and non-human animals, with a specific focus on disorders of compulsivity such as substance use disorders, behavioural addictions, eating disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder. These methods are also used in model-based analyses of fMRI and neurophysiological data in healthy and clinical populations, with the aim to develop a comprehensive models of the neural dynamics of cortico-thalamo-striatal circuits, under aminergic modulation.
Here is a list of grants and publications, and here is a link to download a full CV (last update: July 2025)
vincenzo.fiore@mssm.edu
BlueSky (occasionally used).
Postdoctoral Fellows
B. Ülgen Kılıç, PhD
Ülgen earned his B.S. in Mathematics from Boğaziçi University in Istanbul and completed his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, NY. He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Depression and Anxiety Center and the Center for Computational Psychiatry within the Department of Psychiatry. Using advanced methods from network science, dynamical systems, topological data analysis (TDA), and AI/ML, Ülgen’s research focuses on developing data-driven analysis frameworks tailored to neuroimaging data, with the goal of exploring neural dynamics across various cognitive processes, behavioral states, and psychiatric illnesses.
bengier.kilic@mssm.edu
PhD students
Amber E. Kiely (formerly Amber E. McLaughlin)
Amber is a PhD student under the supervision of Dr. Andrew Smith and Dr. Vincenzo Fiore. She is working on the model-based analysis of behavioral and intracranial single neuron and LFP data, in patients with OCD, tasked with different versions of reversal learning tasks.
amber.mclaughlin@icahn.mssm.edu
Justice Simonetti
Justice is a PhD student under the supervision of Dr. Vincenzo Fiore, working to uncover the neurocomputational underpinnings of pathologically obsessive behavior. His research integrates model‑based behavioral, fMRI and intracranial LFP data analysis in individuals with obsessive‑compulsive disorder (OCD).
justice.simonetti@icahn.mssm.edu
Clinical Research Coordinators
Prerna Bansal
Prerna is a Clinical Research Coordinator in the Fiore Lab. She works on an NIMH-funded study using behavioral tasks and computational modeling to understand the mechanisms driving compulsive behavior in OCD. Her research interests center on stress-induced neuroplasticity and how it shapes differential susceptibility to addiction and compulsive disorders. She holds a Master’s degree in Psychology (Neuroscience track) from NYU and is preparing to pursue a PhD in behavioral neuroscience.
Past Lab members (who have spent at least 6 months in the lab.)
PhD students:
Alessandra N. C. Yu – Google Scholar
Research assistants:
Ember Zhang – LinkedIn
Clinical Research Coordinators
Shuting (Jane) Yang – LinkedIn
Master students:
Kelsey Aguirre – LinkedIn
Rupak Krishnamurthy Vijayaalaksmi – LinkedIn
Open Positions
We currently do not have any open position. Stay tuned!