My name is Anita Devineni, and I’m an Assistant Professor of Biology at Emory University. I study how the brain processes sensory information from the world and integrates different kinds of signals. You can learn more about my lab here.

The mysteries of the brain first seduced me when I was an undergraduate at Stanford University. Lectures by the brilliant and eccentric Prof Robert Sapolsky initially sparked my interest in neuroscience. I worked as an undergrad research assistant in Liqun Luo’s lab for a couple years where I studied how neurons form the proper connections during development. The Luo lab is where I fell in love with research and learned that (most) scientists are normal people and not total weirdos as I’d assumed. It’s also where I fell in love with fruit flies, which I initially thought were super gross but eventually captured my heart.

sorting flies, or how I spent most of my 20s

I then entered a PhD program in neuroscience at UC San Francisco. Working in Ulrike Heberlein’s lab (now at the HHMI Janelia Research Campus), I studied the genes and brain circuits that regulate behavioral responses to alcohol in fruit flies. So basically I got flies drunk for a living. Yes, drunk flies do behave a lot like drunk humans (for example, check out this video from my former colleague Fred Wolf).

After I got my PhD in 2012 I moved to New York, where I did a postdoc with Richard Axel at Columbia University. I continued to work on fruit flies, dissecting the neural pathways for sensing taste and studying how they’re modulated by hunger. This work laid the foundation for my own lab’s research at Emory.

As a professional neuroscientist I feel that we have an obligation to communicate our understanding of science to the general public. That’s why I started this blog (read more here). I also just really enjoy writing and discussing science with others. So please leave a comment, shoot me an email, or follow me on Twitter if you’d like to contact me with questions, feedback, or suggestions for future posts!