I grew up in Kharkiv, an intellectual and industrial center in eastern Ukraine that now endures relentless bombardment by the Russian military. I attended a secondary school on the city’s outskirts, and upon graduation, I was the only student in my class to earn admission to Kharkiv National University, Ukraine’s premier institution and the site of the first atomic split in the Soviet Union. I completed my BSc in Biophysics there, an experience that set the foundation for my scientific career and deepened my commitment to understanding the principles that govern living systems.

I was thrilled to be accepted into the PhD program at the University of Alberta in Canada. It felt like the biggest break of my life. Working with my mentor, Dr. Prochazka, an engineer turned neuroscientist, was transformative. His vision and curiosity inspired me daily. Under his leadership, I explored the remarkable adaptability of the nervous system, from changes in reflex contributions to locomotion after peripheral nerve injury to the impact of neuromuscular stimulation on hemiparesis following stroke.

I advanced my research career as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Montreal, working with Dr. Kalaska, whose mentorship pushed me to tackle one of the most fundamental questions in motor control: how does the nervous system integrate sensory feedback with the complex dynamics of the musculoskeletal system during movement? As the primary author on both experimental and computational studies, I investigated key mechanisms of sensorimotor integration during goal-directed arm movements in humans. Our work revealed that the brain fuses proprioceptive input with internal predictive signals to form an optimal estimate of limb state, and that this estimate drives rapid error-correction responses to both external and internal perturbations. We further demonstrated that these online corrections depend on proportional dynamic error feedback and exhibit limited plasticity when confronted with visuomotor transformations. From Dr. Kalaska, I learned not only how to shape rigorous scientific questions but also how to uncover deeper insights into the workings of the nervous system.