Hej! My name is Valentin, this semester I have joined the Vision group and Stanley Heinze’s team as a doctoral student.
I am originally from France, where I graduated from a Bachelor in Life Sciences at the University of Strasbourg. I moved to Sweden in 2018 and joined Lund University to pursue a Master’s in Animal Ecology. For my thesis, I studied the intricate neural circuits of a region of the honeybee brain which is central to its impressive navigational abilities. My newly found fascination for the insect’s brain led me to become a research assistant in the Heinze team (Vision group), and more recently to enroll as a doctoral student.
During my project, I will be supervised by Stanley Heinze and co-supervised by Marie Dacke. I will be studying the central complex, a conserved region of the insect’s central brain linked with navigation, among other functions. My work will aim to compare species from the major groups of insects, to uncover the neural circuits underlying insects’ navigational strategies: the circuits which are conserved across species, and those linked to species-specific adaptations.
I am looking forward to pursuing my project here, and I am excited to be part of my team and more broadly, Lund University!
