Doing a PhD in theoretical neuroscience at Columbia U. NYC. I like to do science because it lets me try to solve interesting problems. I hope to treat it as a humble craft and a privilege. I want to keep doing science but not at the cost of dishonesty, excessive competitiveness or if it requires relinquishing genuine curiosity for mere 'production' of 'publishable results'.

Maybe un-relatedly (but not really) I think we live in a world where the dominant ideology encourages fearfulness and a correspondingly excessive caution with respect to other people. I think we can push against this in various ways, including using couch surfing!

I like: science, pottery, rock climbing, philosophy, food, drinking and being merry, poetry. Avoiding that existential void! Buen vivir. Building proper community.

I'm interested in working to understand and hopefully change the structural aspects of society that limit the way people can live. I read as extensively as possible and love to learn about anything that someone is passionate about. I generally get a long well with people who want to engage vigorously and who want to make it more likely that more people will live well! Political types, joyful types, intellectual types, those who embrace 'laziness', these are my people :-)

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

I've used CS a lot in the past, met many decent people, found it a nice way to travel, and also nice to help out people traveling wherever I'm living.

Interests

Intersts, ja ja ja. Here's a poem that I love by Alice Oswald (here's her reading it amazingly: http://tinyurl.com/zaehqgu):

It is the story of the falling rain
To turn into a leaf and fall again

It is the secret of a summer shower
To steal the light and hide it in a flower

And every flower a tiny tributary
That from the ground flows green and momentary

Is one of water’s wishes and this tale
Hangs in a seed head smaller than my thumbnail

If only I a passerby could pass
As clear as water through a plume of grass

To find the sunlight hidden at the tip
Turning to seed a kind of lifting raindrip

Then I might know like water how to balance
The weight of hope against the light of patience

Water which is so raw so earthy-strong
And lurks in cast iron tanks and leaks along

Drawn under gravity towards my tongue
To cool and fill the pipe-work of this song

Which is the story of the falling rain
That rises to the light and falls again

• arts
• books
• dining
• traveling
• music
• rock climbing
• neuroscience

Teach, Learn, Share

I can teach you how to play Go. I can teach you about the brain a little bit (not that much to know yet).

Maybe I can teach you a bit about rock climbing, and maybe bring you out climbing if you are eager.

Countries I’ve Lived In

Germany, Ireland, United States

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