The rockefeller university

Event Details

Type

Friday Lecture Series

Speaker(s)

Vanessa Ruta, Ph.D., Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Assistant Professor and head, Laboratory of Neurophysiology and Behavior, The Rockefeller University

Speaker bio(s)

Animal behavior arises from an interplay between instinct and learning. Certain behaviors are innate and invariant across members of a species, suggesting that they are genetically programmed into the nervous system. However, behavior must also be highly flexible to accommodate variations in the state or experience of individuals. Dr. Ruta’s group has been working to elucidate the organization and function of neural circuits that underlie innate and learned responses in the fruit fly Drosophila, an insect that exhibits a rich repertoire of behaviors mediated by a relatively simple nervous system. She will describe recent studies examining how neural circuits in the fly can be rapidly modified through learning or over the course of evolution to generate individual and species-specific adaptations in behavior.

 

Dr. Ruta received her Ph.D. from The Rockefeller University in 2005, where she was a member of Roderick MacKinnon’s laboratory. She did postdoctoral research with Richard Axel at Columbia University. She was an associate research scientist in the department of neuroscience at Columbia before joining Rockefeller’s faculty in 2011. Dr. Ruta is the recipient of several honors, including an NIH Director’s New Innovator Award in 2013 and The Rockefeller University Distinguished Teaching Award in 2015.

Open to

Public

Host

Cori Bargmann

Reception

Refreshments, 3:15 p.m. - 3:45 p.m., Abby Lounge

Contact

Linda Hanssler

Phone

(212) 327-7714

Sponsor

Linda Hanssler
(212) 327-7714
lhanssler@rockefeller.edu

Readings

http://librarynews.rockefeller.edu/?p=4011