People

Emmanuel is using Drosophila as a model to study the effects of Manganese on social decision-making.

Marion is from France and did her PhD in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her research interests are a mix of neurosciences, psychiatry and genetics. Her hobbies are sports mostly tennis and soccer and rock music.

Marion is working to understand nicotine addiction and the roles of the different nicotinic acetylcholine receptor subunits.

Alexis studied mechanisms through which ion channels mediate the neuronal stress response.

As a postdoc in the Ben-Shahar lab, Nicole Leitner studies the neural mechanisms underlying behavior. In particular, she uses fruit flies as a study system to understand how gene function and neuronal circuitry drive sex-specific behavior, such as male courtship. She is also helping to develop new genetic tools for manipulating neuronal activity in bumblebees using CRISPR/Cas9 technology.

Lulu does RNA-seq data analysis on miRNA.

Doris is a Biomedical Engineering PhD student co-mentored by Yehuda and Dr. Barani Raman (BME). She enjoys long walks on the beach and cliches.

Doris studies how insects smell.

Ross studied how bilateral sensory input is utilized to generate innate behaviors in the fruit fly, D. melanogaster.

Zhen studied the functional and evolutionary roles of codon usage bias in regulating functions of sexually dimorphic genes.

Cassie studied the evolutionary, genetic, and physiological mechanisms that drive nestmate recognition in social insects.

Katie studied the role of pleiotropic gustatory receptors in maintaining the functional coupling between the perception and production of mating pheromones in the genus Drosophila.

Xingguo was a PhD student in the Neuroscience program. He attended Tsinghua University in Beijing, China for his undergraduate studies. For his thesis work, Xingguo worked on the role of transcriptional convergence in regulating ion channels associated with the the intrinsic

In addition to managing the lab, Iris is working on Williams Syndrome genes in Drosophila and the NeuroNex project.

Erik was the Ben-Shahar lab manager for two years before joining the Molecular Genetics and Genomics PhD program at Wash U. For his thesis, Erik works on a Drosophila model of the Williams-Beuren Syndrome, and the potential role of eukaryotic translation initiation factors in regulating neuronal development and plasticity.

Bijou worked with graduate student Ross Mckinney on a fly model of nicotine addiction.

In addition to managing the lab, Iris is working on Williams Syndrome genes in Drosophila and the NeuroNex project.

Poorva worked with postdoctoral fellow Alexis Hill.

Katie worked with graduate student Cassie Vernier on mechanisms for nestmate recognition in honey bees.