Gonzalo Polavieja

PhD in Physical Sciences as 'Marie Curie' fellow (Oxford, UK) at the Child Group, postdoc in Neurobiology as 'Welcome Trust' fellow in Mathematical Biology at theLaughlin Lab (Cambridge, UK). In 2002, I was a Grass Fellow in Neurobiology at the  Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole.  I was a 'Ramon y Cajal' fellow (Theoretical Physics, UAM). Presently, I am a staff scientist at the Cajal Institute (CSIC, Spain).

INTERESTS

Many of our decisions, learning experiences and emotions take place under the influence of other people. What are the rules of this influence? How do these rules explain the emergence of group patterns? Our aim is to reach a quantitative understanding of some of these rules and to find the conditions under which group decisions improve or deteriorate. We try to approach this problem using a variety of methodologies, including behavior, neurobiology, molecular biology and mathematical modelling. We chose to implement this approach in zebrafish and humans. In zebrafish we can manipulate neuronal circuits and the underlying genetics and molecular biology and help designing models that we can test and extend in human experiments.