Assistant Professor of Neuroscience and Affiliate
Area:
Email:
[javascript protected email address]
Whether it be a ballerina’s pirouette or a child’s first steps, motor skill is learned by trial and error. How does the brain learn from mistakes, and what happens to that ability during neurodegeneration? Our lab studies the gene regulatory events that maintain the structure and function of motor circuits. We ask how population wide patterns of neural activity shape action initiation and selection, how chromatin and other epigenetic mechanisms regulate motor learning, and how these regulatory programs are corrupted during the onset and progression of neurodegenerative disease. Beneath these questions sits a simpler one: how do the many cell types of a neural niche work together to let us learn from and act upon our environment? To address these questions, we develop experimental and computational methods that combine in vivo physiological recordings, single cell genomics, and spatial multiomics.
Education
University of California at Berkeley, A.B. Molecular and Cellular Biology, Physics
Harvard University, Ph.D., Molecular and Cellular Biology
Columbia University, Postdoctoral Studies, Neuroscience