Center for Genomic Regulation, Spain

Matthieu Louis was brought to life sciences after being trained as a theoretical physicist at the Free University of Brussels (ULB). Gradually his interest in dynamical systems theory and complex systems shifted to the study of living matter. For his PhD at the EMBL, he studied the regulatory logic of simple gene networks. In the group of Dr. Liisa Holm, he developed the first quantitative model for the process of sex determination in Drosophila – a textbook standard in developmental biology. He then joined the lab of Dr. Leslie Vosshall (Rockefeller University) where he received training in behavioral neurogenetics and sensory neuroscience. His postdoctoral research concentrated on the mechanistic basis of the peripheral encoding and the processing of olfactory stimuli in the Drosophila larva. In 2008 he started his own group at the CRG where perception and orientation behavior have remained a research focus. Using a systems perspective, the main question the Louis lab aims to address is how decision making and sensory-driven behaviors come about in terms of neural computation.