I am a Sr. Research Scientist at NVIDIA, working with the Isaac Lab and Dex teams on efficient perception for training robots in simulation, taking inspiration from the human brain and visual system. I received my Ph.D. in Neural Computation from Carnegie Mellon University, and did postdoctoral research in the Harvard Vision Sciences Lab, where my research on human foveated vision led me into my current research in robotics. I believe neuroscience has a lot to learn from AI and robotics, and vice versa.

Publications

For the most up-to-date list, see my Google Scholar profile.

FOVI: A biologically-plausible foveated interface for deep vision models
Blauch, N. M., Alvarez, G. A., & Konkle, T. (2026). ICML.
[arXiv] [PDF] [Code] [Models on HuggingFace] [Code documentation]

Retinotopic scaffolding of high-level vision
Blauch, N. M., Behrmann, M., & Plaut, D. C. (2025). PsyArXiv.
[HTML] [PDF]

Individual variation in the functional lateralization of human ventral temporal cortex: Local competition and long-range coupling
Blauch, N. M., Plaut, D. C., Vin, R., & Behrmann, M. (2025). Imaging Neuroscience, 3.
[HTML] [PDF] [SI PDF] [Code]

TopoLM: Brain-like spatio-functional organization in a topographic language model
Rathi, N., Mehrer, J., AlKhamissi, B., Binhuraib, T., Blauch, N. M., & Schrimpf, M. (2025). International Conference on Learning Representations.
[arXiv] [PDF] [Code and model weights]

Topoformer: Brain-like topographic organization in Transformer language models through spatial querying and reweighting
BinHuraib, T., Tuckute, G., & Blauch, N. M. (2024). ICLR Re-Align Workshop.
[Paper] [Website] [Code]

Visual word processing engages a hierarchical, distributed, and bilateral cortical network
Vin, R., Blauch, N. M., Plaut, D. C., & Behrmann, M. (2024). iScience, 27, 108809.
[Paper] [PDF]

Data leakage in deep learning studies of translational EEG
Brookshire, G., Kasper, J., Blauch, N. M., Wu, Y. C., Glatt, R., Merrill, D. A., Gerrol, S., Yoder, K. J., Quirk, C., & Lucero, C. (2024). Frontiers in Neuroscience, 18.
[HTML] [PDF]

A connectivity-constrained computational account of topographic organization in high-level visual cortex
Blauch, N. M. (2023). Doctoral dissertation, Carnegie Mellon University.
[PDF]

A connectivity-constrained computational account of topographic organization in primate high-level visual cortex
Blauch, N. M., Behrmann, M., & Plaut, D. C. (2022). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(3).
[Paper] [PDF] [Supplementary Information (PDF)]

Computational insights into human perceptual expertise for familiar and unfamiliar face recognition
Blauch, N. M., Behrmann, M., & Plaut, D. C. (2021). Cognition, 208, 104341.
[PDF]

Uncharacteristic task-evoked pupillary responses implicate atypical locus coeruleus activity in autism
Granovetter, M. C., Burlingham, C. S., Blauch, N. M., Minshaw, N. J., Heeger, D. J., & Behrmann, M. (2020). Journal of Neuroscience.
[Paper]

Representing faces in 3D
Blauch, N. M., & Behrmann, M. (2019). Nature Human Behavior. News & Views commentary on a study of 3D human face memory by Zhan et al.
[PDF]

Functionally localized representations contain distributed information: Insights from simulations of deep convolutional neural networks
Blauch, N. M., Aminoff, E., & Tarr, M. J. (2017). 39th Annual Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society.
[PDF]

Some pretty but uninformative pictures of me