London, England, United Kingdom
Hi, there! I’m a first year PhD student in Systems Neuroscience at the SWC, which is part of UCL, in London. I’m interested in explaining how biological systems can think, choose what to do and make sense of their environment. So far, I’m completing my first rotation with Prof. Andrew Saxe, on how agents construct and use categories. To make sensible theories of how the brain processes information, I’ve had to learn how systems we understand, like computers and neural networks, do it. Indeed, neuroscience fosters a rich collaboration between formal sciences and squishy, biological sciences. I came very much from the latter: pure biology at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. I had the chance to take some neuroscience courses and conduct my undergraduate research project with Dr. Marta Nieto on interhemispheric projections of PV interneurons under changes to the excitatory/inihibitory balance. After that, I went to study the MRes in Experimental Neuroscience at Imperial College London, under the La Caixa postgraduate fellowship. There, I worked with Prof. Nicholas Mazarakis on the development of genetic strategies for reducing focal hyperexcitability in epilepsy; and with Prof. Samuel J. Barnes, on noninvasive electrical stimulation to control network hyperactivity in early Alzheimer’s disease. For a year, I was a Laboratory Research Officer (i.e, an RA) at the lab of Dr. Petr Znamenskiy, at the Francis Crick Institute, also in London. I worked with mice on a virtual environment, in order to understand more about how depth is perceived in the visual cortex. Specifically, I was part of the projects of Dr. Antonin Blot and Yiran He, PhD student in the lab. They taught me a lot about how to think through these problems. I like novels, plants and, unfortunately, politics. About London, I really enjoy the red buses and the ease with which one can bike anywhere
Working on systems neuro at the laboratory of Petr Znamenskiy. Tetrode ephys, 2p microscopy, VR.