I graduated in 1995 with a BA in Zoology specialising in Neurobiology from Trinity College and followed this up with a PhD in 2000 under the supervision of Prof Barry Roberts (Zoology, TCD) focusing on the neuronal and glial responses to injury using a spinal transection paradigm in the european eel Anguilla. I followed my interest in neuronal plasticity and joined the laboratory of Gloria Meredith at Rosalind Franklin University Chicago as a postdoctoral fellow working on a chronic mouse model of Parkinson's disease and from there to the Department of Zoology, TCD as a HRB Research Fellow to establish a zebrafish model for spinal injury. I joined the lab in 2008 where I have been primarily focused in the search for some of the molecular determinants required for the change in olfactory synaptic circuitry that is known to occur after long term habituation to a specific odour (e.g. Das et al., 2011). To this end I am focused on the changes in physiology in second order projection neurons using 2-photon calcium imaging.

I graduated in 2001 from the WWU Muenster with a Masters in Biology and followed this up with a PhD in Christian Klaembt's group at the same universtity. I focused on the effect of beta-spectrin in the embryonic development of Drosophila melanogaster. Afterwards I did a 3 years postdoc with Pablo Labrador in Trinity College Dublin before I joined Mani's group in late 2009. My research revolves around particle formation and regulation of local translation with a focus on the effect of the poly-Q domains of Ataxin2 on these functions.

Olfactory habituation in Drosophila: The role of cAMP-signaling and Synapsin in GABAergic local interneurons
I am a graduate student in the lab from 2008. I have received my B.Sc.Ed and MSc (in Genetics) degrees from the University of Mysore, Mysore, India. In a collaboration with other lab members (Das, Sadanandappa et.al 2011), I have shown that cAMP–signaling dependent pre-synaptic facilitation of GABAergic local interneurons (LNs) in the antennal lobe onto projection neurons underlies olfactory habituation. I am now investigating how signaling mechanisms in LNs influence the synaptic neurotransmission during habituation. My present study suggests that the synapsin function in LNs is necessary for STH. In an unexpected observation the LTH occurs normally in synapsin mutants, points to the different mechanisms for LTH associated synaptic plasticity.

I joined NCBS as a Junior Research Fellow in 2009 after completing my M.Sc in Biotechnology and since 2010 I am a graduate student in K. VijayRaghavans lab. I work on olfactory habituation, in a project guided jointly by Mani and Vijay. Initial part of my work was focused on understanding the role of Projection Neurons in habituation and recently we had reported that plasticity of recurrent inhibition in the antennal lobe is mediated by feedback from the PNs. Along with colleagues in Manis lab, I have also looked into the translational regulatory mechanisms underlying habituation, focussing mainly on the dFmr1 protein. We have identified various protein interactions required for habituation that points to an interesting mechanism on how components of RNA regulatory pathways act differentially to regulate common targets. Ongoing work deals with understanding this in greater details.