Catalin Mitelut

Catalin Mitelut, PhD, JD is a neuroscientist and entrepreneur pioneering the frontier of whole-brain emulation (WBE). His work bridges the neuroscience of agency, artificial intelligence, and neurotechnology pushing towards a unified science of mind uploading in both biological and synthetic systems.

Catalin earned his PhD from the University of British Columbia, conducted research at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and held postdoctoral positions at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute and New York University (NYU), focusing on large-scale neural dynamics and brain-computer-interfaces. In 2024 Catalin received a substantial non-dilutive grant from the Foresight Institute for establishing WBE ecosystems and a SPARK grant from the Swiss Government to apply WBE methodologies to the study of schizophrenia.

As Founder and CEO of Netholabs (www.netholabs.com), Catalin leads an ambitious effort to create the first whole-organism digital twins of mammalian brains, a foundational step toward whole-brain emulation. Netholabs develops and integrates next-generation neurotechnologies, multimodal data pipelines, and AI-driven modeling to capture, simulate, and ultimately emulate the dynamical signatures of living brains in substrate independent systems.

Catalin’s long-term vision is to map, model, and emulate the mind itself - building the technological and theoretical foundations for simulated cognition and digital consciousness.