About me

I’m a PhD Researcher in the Palva Laboratory at the University of Helsinki. My research is driven by a fascination with the complex, high-dimensional dynamics of the human brain, which I primarily explore using large-scale electrophysiology.

My path into research began after medical school in Brazil and has led me through several labs in Europe and the USA. In my initial research positions at the University of Freiburg and the Cleveland Clinic, I worked with animal models to help optimize deep brain stimulation (DBS) for conditions like depression and Parkinson’s disease. My work then shifted to human data at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where my focus turned to analyzing high-density EEG signals to understand brain network topology in epilepsy. This project, which was supported by a 2023-2024 Postdoctoral Fellowship from the American Epilepsy Society, steered me toward the computational and theoretical questions I knew I wanted to pursue in a full-time research career.

My current PhD is the first step on a full-time journey to understand what are the elementary principles that govern brain dynamics. In my current research, I investigate brain traveling waves to determine whether they are essential for cognition. I’m also focused on building an intuitive but rigorous foundation in statistical physics, information theory, and deep learning.

My ultimate goal is to work at the intersection of neuroscience and artificial intelligence. I’m excited by both directions of this “two-way street”: using AI as a powerful tool to decode the brain’s complexity (AI4Neuro), and using the principles of neural computation to inspire a new generation of more capable and efficient artificial intelligence (NeuroAI).