The problem here is that he is joining Neri's group. Neri is an architect who tries to design articles inspired by biology. It's all wishy washy with her (at-least from the science perspective).

So all that enthusiasm is going to Zilch, unless he wants to be a brain skeumorphia artist.

Again, this might inspire some awesome things, but maybe not traditional science research. I think most of HN can buy that.