École Normale Supérieure, Paris, France
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Rava A. da Silveira |
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After graduating from the University of Geneva, Rava A. da Silveira obtained his Ph. D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Subsequently, he was a Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows. Since 2004, he is a permanent faculty at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, in Paris, where he is affiliated to the Department of Physics and to the Department of Cognitive Studies.
While at MIT, Rava A. da Silveira worked on theoretical problems in statistical physics and soft matter physics. He studied disordered magnets, simple models of fracture and other breakdown processes, surface growth phenomena, and instabilities that occur in elastic and liquid films. At Harvard, he continued working on physics problems, developing theories for the behavior of frictional sand and for the behavior of elastic objects subjected to random forces. At the same time, his work extended to theoretical neuroscience and biophysics – his main interests today. In neuroscience, he studies the statistical properties of brain circuitry and simple aspects of its dynamics, as well as retinal processing of visual information. In biophysics, he investigates chemotaxis and other directed behaviors in simple organisms. |
