Dan McCalley
He/Him
I am gay and I am a neuroscientist.//
I am currently a PhD candidate at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. I began graduate school just after coming out of the closet, excited by the opportunity to present a true, openly gay self in a new city.
Encountering public LGBT+ representation has always drawn up a well of emotions. Last year, I even cried when a gay man won the Great British Bake Off and his boyfriend came to watch the final bake.
During my first years of graduate school, I encountered a few baldly homophobic individuals in STEM and I began to struggle in the lab. It occurred to me that while I could find LGBT+ representation in so many places, I’ve never had or known an openly LGBT+ professor or mentor with whom I could share my experiences. I am thrilled to join 500QS, which gives me a sense of belonging and representation more powerful even than watching queer people bake on Netflix.
I am a 4th year studying Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation as an intervention for Alcohol Use Disorder. My work focuses on investigating features of neural architecture that may mediate individual response to TMS treatment.