Doris Tsao is the Chief Scientist for Neuro at Astera. Previously, she was a professor at UC Berkeley in the Neuroscience Department and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. She is known for elucidating the anatomical anatomy and coding principles of the primate face-processing system and for demonstrating its integration into a broader map of object space. Her recent theoretical work proposes a topological account of how object representations emerge in the visual system. She now aims to build on these advances to develop a deeper understanding of perception and consciousness through large-scale, causal manipulation of neural circuits.