My name is Matas and I am a Lithuanian neuroscientist working in Singapore. My journey began in 2018, I decided to move halfway across the world to pursue my education at Yale-NUS College, a liberal arts college here in Singapore established as a collaboration between Yale University and the National University of Singapore. I thoroughly enjoyed my time there and found the interdisciplinary education provided to me incredibly enriching to my growth as an academic and a global citizen. I had the opportunity to take courses across a variety of disciplines including literature and philosophy alongside my major-related courses in molecular biology and chemistry. The culturally nuanced and intellectually stimulating topics I engaged with there have played a significant role in nurturing my globalized worldview.

It was during my time at Yale-NUS that I realized I wanted to be a scientist. Having been allowed to explore the breadth of disciplines offered at the college, I became even more convinced that my passion laid in the study of life, and in particular, the study of the brain. Through the many research internships that I keenly took on, I explored multiple facets of neuroscience through projects at Duke-NUS, Harvard, the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology (IMCB), and Yale-NUS itself. These experiences are summarized in the “Research” section of this website.

Currently, I am serving my three-year bond with the Singapore government as a research officer at the Genome Institute of Singapore. My research interest lies at the intersection of psychiatric disease biology, computational methods used to study that biology, and the discovery of new pharmacological interventions.

As someone with a close relationship to my homeland, I also sincerely believe that every person has a civic duty to the community that has brought them up. Even while I am away from Lithuania, I am constantly searching for ways to give back to the place I call home and the place where many other community-minded and invigorated youths are seeking to make a change. As a young neuroscientist myself, I decided to become a member of a neuroscience collective called Integrative Neuroscience Association (INA). INA acts as a “translational bridge” between the different domains of neuroscience, namely academia, clinical practice, and the interested public. You can check out more of my work in this area under the “Volunteering” section.

Aside from my academic and professional aspirations, I’m also always looking for new things to learn in my free time. I love playing sports and have been playing basketball for many years now. I’ve recently picked up tennis, but we’ll see how that turns out. I’m also learning how to mix techno music and trying to practice French on Duolingo (104 day-streak and counting, as of September 25!).