Job Description

We study how animal behavior emerges from the complex interaction amongst the animal's nervous systems, their muscle-body dynamics, and their environment. We use fruit flies ( Drosophila melanogaster ) as our model organism because they perform many complex behaviors with a relatively simple brain, and because of the many genetic tools that are available in the flies. We employ a multi-pronged approach which includes in vivo whole-cell patch clamp recordings, imaging, and quantitative measurement of behavior, biomechanics and computation.

The candidate will investigate two problems: 1) Despite the complexity of movement of individual limbs and joints during locomotion, the movement of the body itself is simple. One project is aimed at measuring forces and kinematics as a fly walks and using this data to build models that capture the mechanics of locomotion. This project involves taking high speed videos of a fly’s locomotion, using machine vision algorithms to track a fly’s body and limb, and using this data to build a biomechanical model of fly’s locomotion. 2) Understand how neural activity, muscle properties and relation between muscle contraction and joint movement control the movement of a fly’s legs and coordination between legs. #hiring #biomechanics #Research #neuroscience

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