Scholarship and Biography
My research lies at the boundary between mathematics and biology. I chiefly using tools from dynamical systems and stochastic theory to model neuronal activity, competition between ecological species and embryonic development. Dynamical Systems and Stochastic processes allow describing properties of systems evolving in time, possibly partly randomly. I have used these tools to describe the role of disorder, fluctuations and unpredictability in neural computations, with a particular interest in understanding the interplay of structure and function in the brain, from models of single cells activity up to macroscopic limits of large stochastic neuronal areas. I have also worked on the functional organization of the visual cortex in search for their organizing principles, but also on the mechanisms leading, during embryonic development, to the emergence of appropriate brain phenotypes.
My approach often involves data analysis, simplified mathematical models, computer simulations and theoretical and mathematical analysis, using dynamical systems and probability. And in this program, I enthusiastically collaborate with experimentalists, mathematicians and physicists!