About Me

Pronouns: he/him

Despite having worked primarily in hospitals throughout my academic career, my main interests are in basic, rather than applied, neuroscience. I want to know how physiological processes result in complex cognition, emotion, personality and the like. And I want to know how and why these functions evolved.

As of 2025 I am a postdoc working on brain evolution in snakes and lizards in the research group of Dr Jenna Crowe-Riddell in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Adelaide (soon to be Adelaide University) in Australia.

From 2022 to 2024 I was mostly absent from academia, however I kept one foot in the door by co-supervising a PhD student working on the neural basis of the evolution of sociality in the lab of Prof. Martin Whiting in the Department of Biological Sciences at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. During this time also spent a few months working for each of my previous employers: SickKids Hospital in Toronto, the Douglas Hospital in Montreal, and the Australian National University in Canberra trying to wrap up projects that had been disrupted due to the COVID-19 pandemic or, if not wrap them up, at least help get them back on track. Finally, I spent six months at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Germany, while my partner was a fellow there.

In late 2021 I was a visiting scientist in the Memorial University Department of Chemistry, lab of Prof. Lindsay Cahill. Dr. Cahill is an expert in MRI methods and I’m benefitting from her expertise and resources to process and analyze the extensive collection of reptilian and amphibian neural MRIs I’ve acquired over the past ten years.

From 2019 to 2021 I was a postdoctoral fellow under the supervision of Dr. John Sled at the Mouse Imaging Centre (MICe) at SickKids Hospital in Toronto. I was also appointed to the Department of Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto.

From 2016 to 2019 I was a postdoctoral fellow under the supervision of Dr. Cecilia Flores in psychiatry at McGill University. I was based at the Douglas Hospital Research Centre located in the Douglas Mental Health University Institute.

I did my PhD at The Australian National University in Canberra, Australia on lizard brain anatomy and evolution under the supervision of Prof. Scott Keogh.  I was co-supervised by Assoc. Prof. Martin Whiting at Macquarie University in Sydney. My thesis was titled "Structure and Evolution of Dragon Brains" and can be viewed for free here.

I completed my undergraduate degree at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.  I was passionate about both neuroscience and animal biology throughout my degree and I ended up graduating with a double major in both topics.

In my spare time I grow an edible garden on my balcony, watch wild birds and mammals and seek out the rare and unusual ones, scour nooks and crannies for wild reptiles and amphibians, and generally try to embrace my wanderlust as much as possible. It's a nice respite from my windowless office. EDIT: at the time of writing (2025), I am now senior enough that my offices generally have windows.

My full academic CV, current as of March 2025, is here.