Mikkel Roald-Arbøl is a doctoral researcher in the Evolutionary Computational Neuroscience laboratory at University of Sussex. His doctoral work explores sleep in beetles; do they sleep? what environmental factors affect their sleep? what happens in the brain of a sleeping beetle? This work brings together diverse disciplines; behavioural ecology, neuroscience and, ultimately, consciousness.
With degrees in human biology and sports science, he has previously done research in human biomechanics, motor control and learning at University of Copenhagen and University of Queensland. His curiosity changed in the direction of evolution of brains and the widespread use of bioelectricity across multicellular organisms, with his first project exploring perception of self-motion in ants, using virtual reality.
Mikkel is also an ardent open science advocate, actively engaged in ways in which technology can make science more open, fair and equitable. He is a recipient of the “Sussex Doctoral Open Research” award for his development of both open source software and hardware.