Speaker
Elif Gencturk
Description
I regard caenorhabditis elegans, as a first step to understand more complex brains. I believe that microfluidics is the missing ingredient to breakthroughs. I will build microfluidic chips in which a single worm can hatch from an egg, be fed in a controlled manner with bacteria, and be imaged for whole-brain activity throughout its life while receiving stimuli to spark information processing activity. Then I will acquire in molecular biology, genetics, whole-brain imaging, and image analysis to study differences in brain activity in wild-type and mutant worms that fail to develop normally. I will test whether interventions with optogenetics or drugs can rescue brain development, generating useful hints for medicine.
Author
Elif Gencturk