Ale obtained his BS in Computer Science and MS in Cellular and Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Trento in Italy. Prior to joining the Ph.D. program at Caltech, he spent two years at the University of Michigan (under Dr. Allen Liu) and at Baylor College of Medicine (under Dr. Francois St. Pierre) trying to construct a synthetic neuron from the bottom-up. Throughout the years, he became increasingly fascinated by the idea of non-invasively interfacing with the brain to investigate and control the activity in neural circuits and looks forward to working on such neuroengineering technologies while at Caltech.