David Mély is a first-year graduate student in the CLPS Department. Before coming to Brown, he graduated in 2011 from the École Polytechnique (B.A. and postgraduate studies) in France where he studied theoretical physics and biology. He is interested in neuromorphic computation, the representation of three-dimensional shape perception in the brain and the dialogue between neurobiology and artificial vision. He now works on how to improve the visual cortical architecture HMAX using inspiration from the lateral connections present in the cortex, as well as from other biologically-relevant mechanisms.