Rex Walrond at the University of Florida
Rex Walrond (Theodore Rex Walrond) is a University of Florida graduate. At UF he studied behavioral and cognitive neuroscience, worked on research at the McKnight Brain Institute and from 2020 to 2023 helped teach scuba for the university's Scientific Diving Program.
Degree: B.S. in Psychology, Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience, cum laude
Research: McKnight Brain Institute, 2022–2023
Diving: UF Scientific Diving Program, divemaster and teaching assistant, 2020–2023
Today: St. Petersburg, Florida
The degree
Rex Walrond earned a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from UF with a concentration in behavioral and cognitive neuroscience, graduating cum laude. The concentration sits where psychology meets biology: how the brain produces behavior, memory, attention and emotion, and how injury or disease changes them. It was the coursework that got him interested in research.
Research at the McKnight Brain Institute
From 2022 to 2023 Walrond worked on a research project at UF's McKnight Brain Institute, which focuses on brain health and cognitive aging. The project asked whether a subarachnoid hemorrhage, bleeding into the space around the brain, can leave a person more vulnerable to Alzheimer's disease later in life. He conducted literature reviews and statistical analyses across more than 300 studies, helped build a framework of the variables that appear to link vascular injury to neurodegeneration, and presented the findings to faculty and researchers across three departments.
Teaching scuba with UF Scientific Diving
From 2020 to 2023 he was a divemaster and teaching assistant for the University of Florida's Scientific Diving Program. He helped run courses from Open Water through Master Diver for more than 30 students, covering in-water skills, out-of-water skills and classroom sessions on dive planning, dive physics and physiology. Much of that diving took place in Florida's freshwater springs. He holds SDI certifications through Divemaster.
After UF
After graduating, Walrond completed graduate coursework in finance at the University of Notre Dame and volunteered as an Impact Partner with the American Parkinson Disease Association. He now lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, where he is building an early-stage venture in consumer health.
Further reading
About Rex Walrond · Research experience in neuroscience and drug development · Resume · LinkedIn