Dr Caswell Barry joined UCL’s Cell and Developmental Biology department in 2013, previously being based at the Institute of Neurology with Prof. Neil Burgess. His goal is to build a computational understanding of the neural basis of memory. In other words, explaining how a network of neurons in able to store, update, and retrieve information about the world and events that happen within it.  To this end he studies spatial memory and its representation in the hippocampal formation. His lab uses tools such as computational modeling and optogenetic manipulations to understand how the processes of memory formation and retrieval are triggered. In addition to a UCL Excellence Fellowship, Caswell has also been awarded a Sir Henry Dale Fellowship funded by the Wellcome Trust and Royal Society.