Cornell neurobiologist Zhilei Zhao has received a 2025 Fellows-To-Faculty Award from the Simons Foundation to support his advance from postdoctoral fellow to faculty position.

Credit: Chris Kitchen

A former Klarman Fellow in neurobiology and behavior in the College of Arts & Sciences (A&S), Zhao is continuing his research into the neural mechanisms of parrot vocalizations in the Goldberg lab with this support. Fellows-to-Faculty recipients get funding toward the end of their postdoctoral careers and a $600,000 faculty research grant commitment over three years.

As a Klarman Fellow, Zhao worked on understanding how parrots’ brains achieve their advanced and rare vocal abilities. He led 2023 research that found drastically different effects in brain mechanisms of songbirds and parrots, providing a clue into how parrot (and human) brains allow continuous, flexible vocal learning. 

“It’s an incredibly exciting time for the field of animal communication,” Goldberg said. “The field is being powered by those rare scientists, including Zhilei Zhao, who can deploy the latest AI and neurotechnical methods.”

Read the full story on the College of Arts and Sciences website.