Asma Motiwala (she/her)

Research Scientist at ECE and CNBC  

1. What are your academic and/or professional goals? My goal is to be able to lead a research program that investigates how the brain gives rise to cognitive functions such as decision making and planning. I want to study these processes from a theoretical perspective using computational and statistical methods.
2. Tell us about a significant moment in your journey at CMU so far. My first visit to CMU in 2016 as a summer visiting graduate student was one of my most significant moments in my journey at CMU. At the time, I was in grad school at a small private research institute in Lisbon, Portugal. At that time, we were still a very small institute in Lisbon and I was the only female computational researcher there at the time. When I visited CMU, the groups I interacted with included a handful of incredibly talented female computational members. Being around them made a huge impression on me. It gave me much needed confidence and a sense of belonging that I hadn’t realized I was missing. That experience, and then several subsequent ones, underscored for me the importance of representation. And my experience during that visit was a significant factor in my choosing to come to CMU for my postdoc.
3. What do you like to do in your time away from academic work? I love to spend time with my cats, do gardening and ceramics.
4. Tell us about your last memorable meal. What was it, where did you have it, and who were you with? My last memorable meal was eating grilled fish at a beachside restaurant in Lisbon. My colleagues and I recently visited Lisbon for one of the most prominent conferences in our field. The day before the conference we went out for lunch and had the most enormous sea bass I have ever eaten. It was more than 1.5 feet long and the four of us were barely able to finish it, with the most incredible view in the background.
5. What’s your favorite thing about Pittsburgh? I really like that Pittsburgh has three large city parks. I enjoy being able to go to the parks for walks and that doing so is really easy given their proximity.