Michael Ryan is from Long Island, New York and attended SUNY Stony Brook, where he studied Biology and Philosophy, and where he first became interested in electrophysiology, studying plasticity of brainstem-cerebellar circuits with Craig Evinger. He then worked in the lab of Anne Churchland at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, where he studied multisensory integration in the cortex. He joined the UCSF Neuroscience Program in 2014 and the Nelson lab in 2015. A talented in vivo physiologist, Mike is studying the role of direct and indirect pathway striatal neurons in levodopa-induced dyskinesia. Mike is also a recent convert to the space age technique called cooking dinner. In his spare time, he is developing his argument in the Adele versus Taylor Swift debate and training for 5K walks.