Dr. Francesco Cavarretta is an Assistant Professor in the department of Computer Science at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and a Research Fellow at the Emerging Analytics Center. He received his PhD in Mathematics from the University of Milan, Italy (2017). To carry out his dissertation research, he spent two years as a visiting PhD student in the lab of Gordon M. Shepherd (Senselab) at Yale University, where he received extensive training on neurobiology and large-scale biophysically-detailed modeling (2015-2016). He then joined Cornell University as a postdoctoral fellow to further his training in computer modeling of cortical circuits, with focus on olfactory cortex and neuromodulation (2017-2020). He then moved to the lab of Dieter Jaeger as a postdoctoral fellow to investigate normal and parkinsonian dynamics of the ventromedial motor thalamus and primary motor cortex, using biophysically-detailed simulations (2020-2024). He is currently developing a microcircuit of the anterior piriform cortex to study the activity of semilunar and superficial pyramidal neurons during odor perception to understand how these neurons integrate synaptic inputs from the olfactory bulb and other olfactory areas.