Discovery was always fascinating to me. The curiosity of how a cell looks under the microscope and how a volcano erupts under the earth’s crust has led me to pursue a career in science. I still remember how excited I felt after my first experiment in a lab class where we had to touch an LB-agar plate with our fingers before and after we wash them to see what grows on it. I still hold on to the feeling of surprise when I saw mold growing because of my dirty fingers.
Optogenetics, a new technology used to control brain activity with light, has revolutionized the field of neuroscience in the past decade. The combination of two powerful tools, genetics and optics, has provided both temporal and spatial acuity in understanding how the brain works in response to sensory and motor cues in the environment. At the recent NIH Research Festival symposium titled “Optogenetic approaches to investigating the nervous system,” fellows and scientists from the NIH community presented their research encompassing topics that make use of this approach to study different systems.
Walking around the NIH’s Bethesda Research Campus is a stimulating experience on any day. The cluster of National Institutes and Centers (ICs) within a 1.5-mile radius is a hive of activity, with researchers walking and talking as they move from building to building to use centralized resources, meet with collaborators, or learn the latest in techniques and news from the other ICs.
As a postdoc in the Membrane Transport Biophysics Unit at NINDS, I’ve spent the past several years studying lysosomal pH. For me, that means spending a lot of my time in a pitch-black room, a room that I refer to as my cave.
This page was last updated on Friday, January 14, 2022
