Currently — Co-founder & Chief Scientist at cogniBIT

Control Engineer · Computational Neuroscientist

Vahid S.
Bokharaie

I work where dynamical systems meet the real world — from stability theorems to the brain's own control loops.

For over a decade I've worked on systems that must stay stable under uncertainty — from nonlinear control theory to the neuroscience of perception. Today I bring that toolkit to self-driving cars.

28Publications
800+Citations
5Open-source tools
PhDControl theory

About

One toolkit, from theorems to the brain.

I'm a control engineer and computational neuroscientist. My PhD was on the stability of positive and monotone dynamical systems — proving when large, coupled nonlinear systems settle rather than spiral out — and that question has followed me across fields ever since.

I've used it to optimize wind farms, study delay-driven instabilities in power grids, model how epidemics spread, and — at the Max Planck Institute — probe how the brain perceives and learns with eye-tracking, EEG, and MRI. The common thread is feedback under uncertainty, which is exactly the problem an autonomous vehicle has to solve. That's what I work on now — as co-founder and Chief Scientist of cogniBIT, bringing cognitive science and simulation together to make autonomous systems safer.

Toolkit

Control theory Nonlinear dynamics Python Machine learning Data science Optimization Signal processing EEG · eye-tracking fMRI · PET CFD · LES Scientific computing

Research & Focus Areas

Where I've applied the work.

Autonomous Systems● Current

Autonomous Driving

Applying control engineering, data science, and models of human perception to self-driving systems — designing frameworks that learn from real driving behavior to improve algorithms and safety standards.

ControlMachine learningPerceptionSafety
Control Theory

Dynamical Systems & Stability

PhD research on stability of monotone and positive systems: delay-independent stability, D-stability, and equilibria of subhomogeneous cooperative systems — new theorems for when nonlinear systems stay stable.

Nonlinear systemsPositive systemsTime-delay
Neuroscience

Computational Neuroscience

Perception, adaptive learning, and neuromodulation — studied with eye-tracking, EEG, pupillometry, and functional/molecular MRI, including calcium-responsive MRI probes for cerebral ischemia.

EEGEye-trackingfMRILC-NE
Epidemiology

Mathematical Epidemiology

Age-stratified compartmental models with time-varying parameters, contact-rate estimation from real data, and optimization of containment and vaccine-distribution strategies — including a full analysis of SARS-CoV-2 spread.

Epidemic networksOptimizationSIS/SIR
Wind Energy

Wind-Farm Optimization

A hybrid Jensen–LES method to optimize turbine layouts on a regular computer — reaching over 90% of large-eddy-simulation accuracy without the supercomputer such simulations normally demand.

CFDLESOptimization
Power Systems

Grid Stability with Delay

Small-signal stability of power system stabilizers, and how time delays in wide-area measurements affect synchronous-generator stability — published as a book chapter and conference work.

StabilityTime-delayPSS

Open Source

Tools I've built and released.

Open-source scientific tools I've written and released — from molecular-fMRI analysis (peer-reviewed in the Journal of Open Source Software) to epidemic modeling and neuroscience data acquisition.

MiTfAT Analysis toolkit for molecular & functional MRI experiments — peer-reviewed in JOSS. PythonRepo
MiTepid_sim Simulation of epidemic compartmental models and their trajectories. PythonRepo
MiTepid_opt Estimation of epidemic-model parameters by fitting to real-world data via optimization. MATLABRepo
LSL_Video_Acquisition A minimal video-acquisition outlet for Lab Streaming Layer (LSL) — synchronized data capture for experiments. PythonRepo
XKCD_color_sorter Sorts the XKCD color-survey palette by hue, saturation, and value. PythonRepo

Trajectory

A path across disciplines.

Now

Teaching machines to see and decide

Co-founder & Chief Scientist, cogniBIT — cognitive science & simulation for safer autonomous systems · Tübingen
2017 — 2022

Finding the control loop inside the brain

Perception, learning & neuromodulation · Max Planck Institute, Tübingen
2020 — 2021

Which interventions actually bend an epidemic curve?

Age-structured COVID-19 modeling · independent work
2013 — 2016

Getting supercomputer accuracy from an ordinary machine

Wind-farm layout optimization · KU Leuven
2008 — 2012

Proving when systems stay stable at all

PhD, control theory · Hamilton Institute, Maynooth
Next

Safe autonomy, grounded in human perception

Bridging AI & neuroscience · provable safety · cross-disciplinary by design

Publications

Selected work.

All 28 on Google Scholar ↗
2020 A community-based transcriptomics classification and nomenclature of neocortical cell types
R. Yuste, M. Hawrylycz, … V. Bokharaie, et al.
Nature Neuroscience
305 cites
2014 Stability criteria for SIS epidemiological models under switching policies
M. A. Rami, V. S. Bokharaie, O. Mason, F. R. Wirth
Discrete & Continuous Dynamical Systems — Series B
96 cites
2019 Early detection and monitoring of cerebral ischemia using calcium-responsive MRI probes
T. Savić, G. Gambino, V. S. Bokharaie, H. R. Noori, N. K. Logothetis, et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)
60 cites
2016 Wind-farm layout optimisation using a hybrid Jensen–LES approach
V. S. Bokharaie, P. Bauweraerts, J. Meyers
Wind Energy Science
28 cites
2025 Pupil-linked arousal and decision-making under uncertainty: adaptive learning in a set-shifting task
V. Bokharaie, N. Safaei, R. Iwai, N. Logothetis
Authorea (preprint)
recent

Thoughts & Past Work

Everything I write, in one place.

My own scientific work and research notes, alongside essays, film, and the occasional argument about life and society — filter to whatever you're after.

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Contact

Let's talk.

Open to conversations about autonomous systems, control, applied ML, and research collaboration. Send a note with the form, or find me on the links below.

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