Emma T
- Research Program Mentor
PhD candidate at Stanford University
Expertise
Analyzing gene expression in neurons, fruit fly neurons, neuroscience, cell biology
Bio
Hi! My name is Emma and I am a Neuroscience PhD student at Stanford. My thesis project uses the fruit fly brain as a system to study energy consumption in neurons. Beginning in the womb and continuing until death, our brains conduct an orchestra of circuit activity, coordinated across billions of neurons through trillions of communication nodes called synapses. However, maintaining synapse function is energetically expensive, challenging the brain to match energy supply with demand. To dissect these mechanisms, I use tools uniquely available in the fruit fly to measure how neuronal energy consumption fluctuates in real time with changing activity demands. I was born and raised in Germany, and completed high school in Finland. I moved to the US when I was 19 to pursue a neuroscience degree and have been following my passion in the subject ever since! I have been lucky to have had many incredible mentors along the way, and I am committed to passing on the same spirit of support to my mentees. In my free time, I like to paint, explore the Bay Area, and my guilty pleasure is binge watching cooking competition shows.Project ideas
Genetic instructions for building a brain
How do genes contribute to building a brain? Why are some neurons large and other neurons tiny? In this project, you will use publicly available bioinformatics datasets from the fruit fly brain to test which genes are associated with specific features in neurons. We will use Python to code analysis pipelines that bridge between microscopy data and gene expression data. I have a template code that you can use as a learning tool and example, and I can teach you how to modify this code depending on what specific question you are interested in asking. If you know what a “for loop” is, that is enough coding experience to start with this project!