Past Visitors and Projects

Projects listed in chronological order

• Studies on the Larval Nervous System of Drosophila
  APRIL 22, 2006 - JUNE 3, 2007
  VISITOR: Marta Zlatic (junior research fellow at Trinity College, University of Cambridge, now working at Columbia University with Wes Grueber)
  HOST: Julie Simpson (group leader)
  PROJECT SUMMARY: Marta Zlatic's project brought her to Janelia to collaborate with Julie Simpson for six weeks. Their focus was to use assays for larval behavior with genetic reagents available in Simpson's lab to map circuits. Janelia fellow Rex Kerr contributed his expertise to provide automated methods for tracking the movement of larvae under a variety of conditions. This pilot project was successful and will be repeated and enlarged in the next year.
• The Role of Sniffing for the Processing of Olfactory Information in Rat Mitral Cells
  JUNE 1, 2006 - NOVEMBER 30, 2007
  VISITOR: Matt Wachowiak (Assistant professor of biology, Boston University)
  HOST: Dmitry Rinberg (fellow)
  PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brought Matt Wachowiak and his student Dan Wesson to Janelia, Wachowiak for two one-week periods and Wesson for six months. Wesson worked intensively with Rinberg to develop a head fixed assay for sniffing behavior in the rat.
• Assigning Internal Energies to Unfolded, Single-Stranded RNA and DNA
  SEPTEMBER 1, 2006 - JUNE 30, 2007
  VISITOR: Michael Zuker (professor, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)
  HOST: Sean Eddy (group leader)
  PROJECT SUMMARY: This project brought Michael Zuker to do a one-year sabbatical with Sean Eddy. They collaborated on software to analyze and predict RNA structure from primary sequence.
• High Order Control of Behavior in Drosophila
  DECEMBER 20, 2006 - DECEMBER 19, 2007
  VISITOR: Michael Dickinson (Professor of Bioengineering, California Institute of Technology)
  HOST: Michael Reiser (fellow)
  PROJECT SUMMARY: Michael Dickinson came to Janelia to collaborate with Michael Reiser and others to develop behavioral assays for Drosophila. While the initial intention was to develop a system to track a walking fly (and this was done), new research objectives developed, such as the use of nano-fabricated microelectrodes, and these have evolved into a new project in collaboration with James Truman.
• Large-Scale Recordings of Neurons in the Intact Cortex
  JUNE 1, 2007 - MAY 31, 2008 later years expected.
  VISITOR: Gyorgy Buzsáki (professor, Rutgers University)
  HOST: Jeff Magee (group leader)
  PROJECT SUMMARY: Gyorgy Buzsáki will collaborate with Jeff Magee and several others on the design, prototyping, and testing of new silicon-based multiprobe electrodes for in vivo electrophysiology. Harald Hess (APIG) as well as an outside consultant will also participate. Electrodes are prototyped using a dual-beam electron microscope/Gallium ion beam device. They are then sent for fabrication from silicon wafers at a contract facility. This provides a rapid cycle for design and testing before committing to the high volume and cost of the wafer. This project is particularly crucial for groups attempting this in Drosophila for the first time (Vivek Jayaraman, fellow, and visiting scientist Michael Dickinson), but also serves several labs here that use rodents in their studies.
• Image Processing for Registering Fly Brains and Tracing Neurons in Sparsely Sained 3-D Stacks
  AUGUST 20, 2007 - DECEMBER 20, 2007
  VISITOR: Sven Rahmann (group leader in the AG Genominformatik, Technische Fakultät, at the Universität Bielefeld)
  HOST: Gene Myers (group leader)
  PROJECT SUMMARY: Sven Rahmann came to work with Gene Myers' group at Janelia to develop software for the analysis of neural structure in the fly.
• Mapping Neuropile Foci Using Lineage-Based Approaches in Drosophila
  OCTOBER 1, 2007 - DECEMBER 31, 2007
  VISITOR: Volker Hartenstein (professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology, University of California, Los Angeles)
  HOST: Gene Myers (group leader)
  PROJECT SUMMARY: Volker Hartenstein and his wife and co-worker, Amelia Younossi-Hartenstein, spent a three-month sabbatical at Janelia Farm working with Gene Myers and others. Their focus was on the use of lineage tracing to develop a systematic understanding of the large-scale structure of the fly brain. This project was very successful and Hartenstein is preparing a proposal to continue this work.
• Understanding Circuit Computations Underlying Drosophila Larval Chemotaxis
  OCTOBER 1, 2007 - DECEMBER 31, 2007
  VISITOR: Matthieu Louis (junior group leader, Center for Genomic Regulation, Barcelona, Spain)
  HOST: Vivek Jayaraman (fellow)
  PROJECT SUMMARY: This proposal brought Matthieu Louis to Janelia for twelve weeks to work with Vivek Jayaraman to study circuits involved in larval locomotion and odor tracking. The visit was very productive and a continuation of this effort is now being planned.
• A Pilot Study to Explore Multistable Perception by Drosophila
  JANUARY 1, 2008 - MARCH 31, 2008
  VISITOR: Daw-An Wu (postdoctoral fellow, Vision Science Lab, Harvard University)
  HOST: Michael Reiser (fellow)
  PROJECT SUMMARY: Daw-An Wu will collaborate with Michael Reiser to undertake exploratory experiments in an attempt to detect multistable perception in Drosophila. In this case they will focus on the unification of the images generated by the two eyes, using flight orientation behavior as an assay.
• MtDNA Nucleoid Dynamics in Models of Neurodegeneration
  JANUARY 1, 2008 - MARCH 31, 2008
  VISITOR: Dan Bogenhagen (professor of pharmacological sciences, SUNY Stony Brook)
  HOST: Eric Betzig (group leader) and David Clayton
  PROJECT SUMMARY: Dan Bogenhagen, together with a postdoctoral associate, comes to Janelia in order to use super-resolution imaging techniques developed in the Betzig lab to study the mechanisms of nucleoid replication in mitochondria.
• Functional Characterization of Interneurons in the Ventral Nerve Cord of Drosophila larva
  FEBRUARY 1, 2008 - APRIL 30, 2008
  VISITOR: Marta Zlatic (Junior Research Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, now working at Columbia University with Wes Grueber)
  HOST: Julie Simpson (group leader)
  PROJECT SUMMARY: Marta Zlatic will return to Janelia to continue her project on the neural circuits underlying larval motion. The scientific focus is to use reagents that are uniquely available at Janelia (new Gal4 expression driver lines) to study circuits involved in controlling larval behavior.
• Novel Approaches to Controlled Gene Expression in the Mouse Nervous System
  JUNE 1, 2007 - MAY 31, 2008
  
  VISITOR: Thomas Südhof (HHMI Investigator and professor of molecular genetics, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas)
  HOST: Alla Karpova and Sean Eddy (group leaders)
  PROJECT SUMMARY: The focus of this project is to develop new methods to express transgenes in specific locations in the mouse brain. This technology is well advanced in Drosophila and other invertebrate models, but has lagged in the mouse. The ability to specifically express activity reporters, cell tracers and reagents to manipulate neural activity is crucial to the full exploitation of the mouse as a genetic model to study the brain.