Arvie was born and raised from the Philippines where he acquired his B.S in Chemical Engineering and received the Engineering Best Thesis Award in 2016. He then moved to South Korea and finished his Master’s degree in Pharmacology, specializing in Neuropharmacology in 2019, under the supervision of Professor Jae Hoon Cheong where he conducted research aimed toward understanding the mechanisms of drug addiction, ADHD, depression, anxiety, stress, and natural products. Arvie has presented his Master’s thesis in several national and international conferences and won an “Oral Presentation Award for the Young Scientist Session” during the International Meeting of Pharmaceutical Society of Korea 2018. In 2019, he received a highly competitive scholarship and began his PhD in Dr. Laura Bradfield’s Lab at University of Technology Sydney investigating the contextual modulation of decision-making, and the behavioural and brain mechanisms of compulsive disorders, with a focus on non-neuronal cells specifically astrocytes and neuron-astrocyte interactions. The research he conducted addresses the endogenous mechanisms that underlie the aberrant decision-making observed in compulsive individuals and in people with neurodegenerative disorders in a causal manner. Indeed, Arvie has presented his work at multiple conferences and won a number of awards for it, including the ALG 2022 Conference in which he won a prize for “Best Oral Presentation”, the ISN 2023 travel award, the IBNS 2022 travel award, and at SfN 2022 conference for which he won the IBRO travel award. In 2023, he started working as a Postdoc in Dr. Melissa Sharpe’s Lab at the University of Sydney exploring how prior experience changes the neural circuits involved in encoding fear memories. In fact, he has been chosen to attend the ISN-JNC Flagship School 2024 titled “Neurochemistry of Mental Illness” to be held in Greece this October to present his work. During his career, Arvie made a significant contribution to the international neuroscience community having published 15 peer-reviewed articles in international scientific journals including seven first author articles. Other than being in the laboratory, Arvie loves bushwalking, camping, travelling to new places, going to the beach, hanging out with friends and family, and trying something new/crazy (e.g., food, adventures, countries).