Busra Tugce Gurbuz

I am a Ph.D. student at Mila-Quebec AI Institute, McGill University, and Montreal Neurological Institute. My research intrest broadly includes reinforcement learning and neuroscience. I aim to deepen our understanding of existing algorithms and develop new ones to have a positive impact on society through real-world applications. I am fascinated by the potential applications of AI in unraveling the complexities of the brain and behavior, with the aim of contributing to or enhancing human capabilities. I enjoy working within diverse and multi-disciplinary teams and often draw inspirations from neuroscience and psychology while developing algorithmic solutions.

My research receives generous support from Fonds de recherche du Québec and Unifying Neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence - Québec scholarships.

Before starting my Ph.D. program, I was an undergraduate student in the Psychology Department at Bilkent University(Ankara, Turkey), where I conducted research on computational neuroscience and psychology at Aysel Sabuncu Brain Research Center (UMRAM).

When I am not doing research, you will find me exploring new activities, experimenting with a variety of cultural dishes in the kitchen, and jamming on my bass guitar.

some recent publications

• Islah, N., Etter, G., Tugsbayar, M., Gurbuz, B. T., Richards, B., & Muller, E. (2023). Learning to combine top-down context and feed-forward representations under ambiguity with apical and basal dendrites. arXiv preprint arXiv:2312.05484.
• Gurbuz, B. T., & Boyaci, H. (2023). Tilt aftereffect spreads across the visual field. Vision Research, 205, 108174. (bioRxiv preprint)