Mitchell Ostrow, Pauli Murray ‘21

Exploration: a trait shared by both music and research

By Matthew Fan.

For senior Mitchell Ostrow, his philosophy in life goes something like this: “It’s not knowing where I’m going, but having some general idea of how to get there.” College is a chance to pursue your interests free of any obligations. Majors can be changed. Labs can be left. No one is bound to anything.

Heading into Yale, Ostrow planned on majoring in applied math. His path quickly took a turn, however, after he took a psychology course on thinking. A rabbit hole into psychology then transformed into an interest in neuroscience. By the fall of his sophomore year, after a meet-the-faculty event, he knew he wanted to be a neuroscience major. He’s since come full circle by adding on a statistics and data science double major.

After declaring as a neuroscience major, Ostrow naturally decided to pursue research. Although he was not sure what the future held in store for him, he knew that research could help with two potential career paths: medical school and graduate school.

Ostrow chose to work in the Pittenger lab at the School of Medicine because of his interest in mental health and psychiatry. He spent a summer on an independent project with a postdoctoral researcher on mouse models of Tourette syndrome. The hands on research experience fascinated him, particularly performing craniotomies on mice and injecting neurotransmitter blockers. Yet, he realized that the behavioral, pharmacological, and cellular side of neuroscience was not what truly interested him. For him, this aspect of neuroscience, although critical to the field, lacked a lot in theory.

Subsequently, he joined the Seo lab. Here, he found his passion at the intersection of computational modeling, machine learning, and neuroscience—studying deep neural networks as models of the brain. To Ostrow, studying these models is especially exciting because through artificial intelligence, his findings can directly impact the world on top of moving science forward. For example, they could potentially be used to synthesize drugs or devise new treatments immediately. Ultimately, Ostrow’s commitment to pursuing what intrigued him the most led him to this research area.

“From doing so much exploration, I was able to really narrow down my interests and find something that I absolutely love and can definitely see myself doing for the rest of my life,” Ostrow said. Right now, that means pursuing a PhD in Computational Neuroscience to study the intersection of AI and neuroscience, as opposed to applying to medical school.

Outside of research, Ostrow enjoys exercise and spending time in nature. Additionally, he is heavily invested in music, formerly playing trombone in the Yale Symphony Orchestra, a trombone choir called Scale and Bones (which he founded), and a brass choir called Coup de Brass. Before college, his identity was predominantly as a trombone player and as a musician. Although he still sees himself in this way, his identity has transformed into that of a researcher.

Surprisingly, he has found commonalities among these two worlds. Initially, most of your time is spent developing technical skills—such as playing scales for trombone and learning how to analyze papers in research. As you progress, however, you develop your own style or you create your own experiments, and creativity flourishes. Moreover, music and research are both personally rewarding as well as community-oriented.

“Science is for society to gain knowledge and music is for other people to enjoy,” Ostrow said. “To me, it's more about appreciating the music or appreciating creating knowledge for myself, and it's an added benefit that other people enjoy it.”