↓ Skip to main content
Bahl lab
  1. Team/

Max Capelle

Table of Contents
Max Capelle
Max Capelle
PhD Student

Bio
#

My PhD research investigates how brightness-guided navigation changes across zebrafish development. Using carefully designed visual stimuli and high-throughput behavioural experiments, I build algorithmic models of decision-making and test them using agent-based simulations. This approach revealed that larval and juvenile zebrafish use different brightness navigation strategies: a behavioural switch driven by a reweighting of three parallel processing streams.

As the first PhD student in the Bahl lab, I contributed to building the experimental and computational infrastructure that the lab now runs on; from hardware setup to analysis pipelines and lab culture. I enjoy translating complex, high-dimensional datasets into clear and communicable conclusions, and have been recognised for this with presentation awards including at the IMPRS and the Göttingen Meeting.

Beyond the bench, I organised programming, data visualisation, and team culture workshops at both lab and department level, served as PhD representative at the Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour (CASCB) across a consortium of 15+ research groups, co-organised the NeuroDoWo workshop, and contributed to the Grant Committee of the Doctoral Fund.

Outside the lab, I am drawn to problems where rigorous quantitative thinking meets real-world impact, including in pharma, biotech, and life sciences R&D.

Juvenile zebrafish
Juvenile zebrafish

Projects
#

Methods
#

Thesis
#

Title Beyond black and white: brightness navigation strategies across zebrafish development
Type PhD thesis
Period 2021/04–2025/11
Summary In my thesis, I investigated how brightness-guided navigation changed across zebrafish development by combining high-throughput behavioral experiments with agent-based modeling. I showed that larval zebrafish preferred bright regions whereas juveniles preferred darker ones, and I identified three parallel visual pathways underlying this behavior: whole-field luminance processing, binocular brightness comparison, and temporal changes in each eye. Together, my results suggest that developmental transitions in phototactic behavior arise not from entirely new computations, but from a reweighting of existing sensory processing streams.

CV
#

Positions

2021–2025 PhD Student, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior / University of Konstanz, Germany
2020–2021 Intern Process Engineering and Flow Assurance, Porthos, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
2019 Internal Consultant / Research Assistant, Center for Ultrasound and Brain Imaging (CUBE), Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
2016 Intern Trading Floor, Trianel GmbH, Aachen, Germany

Education

2021–2025 PhD in Systems Neuroscience, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior / University of Konstanz, Germany
2018–2021 MSc in Applied Physics, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
2014–2018 BSc in Applied Physics, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
2013–2014 Propedeuse in Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

Awards

2025 Present Award, Göttingen Meeting 2025
2024 IdeaCup: Impact Award, Kilometer1
2023 Best Presentation Award, International Max Planck Research School

Publications
#

2026

  • Slangewal K., Aimon S., Capelle M. Q., Kämpf F., Naumann H., Slanchev K., Baier H., Bahl A. (2026) Visuomotor decision-making through multifeature convergence in the larval zebrafish hindbrain. Nature Communications. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-69633-4

2025

  • Slangewal K., Aimon S., Capelle M. Q., Kämpf F., Naumann H., Baier H., Slanchev K., Bahl A. (2025) Parallel and convergent pathways for multifeature visual processing in larval zebrafish sensorimotor decision-making. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.08.12.669772
  • Capelle M. Q., Slangewal K., Eleftheriadis P. E., Bahl A. (2025) Behavioral algorithms of ontogenetic switching in larval and juvenile zebrafish phototaxis. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.06.13.659371
  • Reynolds P., Marchi D., Ling Y. T., Slangewal K., Capelle M., Chalakova Z., Bahl A., Hindges R. (2025) Early visual experience elicits cellular and functional plasticity in the retina and alters behaviour. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.04.29.651180

2024

  • Pflitsch P., Oury N., Krishnan K., Joo W., Lyons D. G., Capelle M., Herrera K. J., Bahl A., Rihel J., Engert F., Zwaka H. (2024) Sleep Disruption Improves Performance in Simple Olfactory and Visual Decision-Making Tasks. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.11.02.621641