LIVING

The city has changed quite a bit. The pickle building [Torre Agbar] didn’t exist and there weren’t so many tourists. Back then, the people were very proud of the newly built Olympic village and we had the peseta. The Gaudí stuff is, of course, timeless.

Neuroscience is the interdisciplinary study of the brain and nervous system. Applied neuroscience could be described as the development of technologies (hardware and algorithms) for enabling neuroscience research. One example of applied neuroscience R&D is the field of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs); devices that allow people to move and take action based on brain signals alone.

I’ve been interested in maths and science, since I was a young child and my parents encouraged this curiosity. My interest in neuroscience started when I was an undergraduate and I took courses in neurobiology. I remember being especially fascinated when my professor explained that neurons are essentially analogue-to-digital converters.

I enjoy ‘mind’ films like The Matrix and Inception, even though they are far from reality. I was particularly impressed by the 3-D brain renderings in Avatar and the fact that they use the term ‘phase-locking’ to describe how close the character is to achieving the Avatar state. When I saw that, I thought, somebody has done their homework!

I have always worked in male-dominated fields so I’ve never really experienced the alternative. My impression is that women in these fields need to make an extra effort to find mentors and establish collaborations.

I didn’t find it at all difficult settling in at Starlab. Spanish people are extremely friendly and sociable, so it was fine.

There is almost nothing I love more than dancing. I took West African dance classes when I first came to Barcelona and I have also done a fair amount of salsa dancing. When I lived in San Diego I used to salsa dance for 10 hours a week.

Coming here to live, I found it hardest to adjust to the cigarette smoke...I took clean air for granted. It was hard for me to go to bars in the winter time. That, and the amount of dog shit on the sidewalk!