I am an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC Santa Barbara, Co-Director of REAL AI for Science and AI for the Ann S. Bowers Women’s Brain Health Initiative.

My research at UCSB explores how intelligent systems—brains and machines—process information to perceive and act in the world. I lead the Geometric Intelligence Lab, where we study neural representations—the activity patterns that encode information in biological and artificial networks— uncover geometric structures in these systems, and use these insights to align and design AI models.

I co-founded the REAL AI for Science Initiative, where I lead efforts to build brain digital twins powered by AI by integrating multimodal data, including imaging, cognitive assessments, and molecular profiles. We aim to forecast brain health, detect early signs of disease, and support personalized care. Through the Bowers Women’s Brain Health Initiative, I build digital twins of women’s brains to model changes across pregnancy, menopause, and aging, helping to close long-standing gaps in women’s health.

Previously, I conducted postdoctoral research in Statistics at Stanford with Susan Holmes, and completed my PhD in Applied Mathematics at Inria with Xavier Pennec. I was trained in Mathematical Physics at Ecole Polytechnique and Imperial College London. My path to academia began unconventionally as an officer in the French Army.

You can follow me on: Github, LinkedIn, Twitter: @ninamiolane, Bluesky: @ninamiolane.bsky.social