Researcher biography
My passion for research and neuroscience began in the summer of 2012, when I was offered a summer research internship investigating basic mechanisms of addiction in rodent models. I was immediately captured by the challenge presented by breaking down complex and multifactorial problems such as mental health disorders into addressable questions. I further explored this ideology by continuing to work in Dr Francesco Leri’s laboratory during my BSc in Brain and Cognition at the University of Guelph and after completing an honors thesis applied to do my PhD with Dr Timothy Bredy, studying epigenetic mechanisms of fear memory. Here I hoped to continue to hone my skills at the microscopic level and further develop skills to help synthesis these observations at a macro-level to address basic questions such as how to reduce the impact of stressful memories in post-traumatic stress disorder from first principle. It is this mindset that I hope to be able to cultivate within the global change scholars program of taking large seemingly intractable problems such as climate change and separating them into solvable components which if answered may have impact.
Paul's principal advisor is Dr Timothy Bredy.