Adel Halawa Current Msc Student in Neuroscience. Undergrad form UofT in same field

Ultimately, I consider myself a theoretical neuroscientist, and feel as though the best way to approach this is via computational neuroscience. Despite achieving a 99.6 percentile score on the MCAT, I never applied to medical school. I instead found that my heart lies in the more abstract space of ideas. The deep flow states, the ups and downs of an ideological pursuit, and the thorough discussion had with like-minded individuals; these experiences simply make me feel alive. I am especially fond of deep discussions and have genuinely found journal clubs to be one of my favorite parts of the week. I find the journey of solving a problem to be intrinsically valuable, no matter what the specific system I am attempting to solve is. Whether I am in a semantic space of some kind, or a more recreational one like a music space, so long as I have some abstract basis by which to organize that space, then I have myself a playground.

University:

University of Toronto

Principal Faculty:

Faculty of Medicine

Principal Department/Program:

Department of Physiology

Principal Hospital Appointment:

N/A

Supervisor:

Steven Prescott

Key Publications:

Tu, G., Halawa, A., Yu, X., Gillman, S., & Takehara-Nishiuchi, K. (2022). Outcome-Locked Cholinergic Signaling Suppresses Prefrontal Encoding of Stimulus Associations. The Journal Of Neuroscience, 42(20), 4202-4214. doi: 10.1523/jneurosci.1969-21.2022