Catalin Mitelut

Catalin MitelutCatalin received his B.Sc. (Honours, Physics and Philosophy, 1999), M.Sc. (Physics, 2001) and M.A. (Philosophy, 2012) from University of Windsor.  University of Windsor and the Department of Philosophy provided unique opportunities and the encouragement for enrolling in cross-disciplinary curricula and Catalin is forever grateful for the university support over the many years of enrolment.  His M.A. thesis, supervised by Dr. Christopher Tindale, investigated the reductionist idea that the principles of Aristotelian rhetoric have scientific explanations.  For his M.Sc. thesis, completed under the supervision of Dr. Gordon Drake, Catalin carried out high-precision calculations of quantum mechanical effects that contribute to the spectra of few body atomic systems.
In 2004 Catalin completed his J.D. at University of British Columbia (UBC) and was called to the bar of BC in 2005. He practiced refugee and asylum law at Mitelut & Company and appeared in the Federal Court and at all levels of the Immigration and Refugee Board.  Among his clients over the years were several of the MV Sun Sea Tamil migrants who arrived on the coast of BC in August of 2010. 
Catalin is currently a PhD student in the neuroscience department at UBC.  He is researching problems of coding in the visual cortex and dendritogenesis in developmental neuroscience.  He continues to be interested in philosophical problems, such as the neuroscience supported idea that we lack free will; he is particularly interested in what will be uncovered by a 21st century scientifically informed philosophical inquiry into free will.