Dan Valente

Dan obtained his Ph.D. in Acoustics from The Pennsylvania State University in 2006 and began working in the Mitra lab shortly thereafter. For his dissertation research, he studied the effect of topology on the dynamical behavior of oscillator networks and developed a genetic algorithm to discover optimal topologies for energy minimization in these networks. While doing this research, Dan became interested in biological networks and was lured into the fascinating world of neuroscience. In the Mitra lab, he is working on modeling Drosophila memory at the level of neural circuitry, using behavioral data and electrophysiological recordings to drive the development of the model.