Awarded in 2009
Home Department: Applied Physics
Faculty Advisors: Liqun Luo (Biology) and Mark Schnitzer (Biology, Applied Physics)

Research Title: GABAergic PNs route odor input at the lateral horn

Research Description: Liang is interested in the organization and information processing principles of neural circuits. She uses the fruit fly olfactory system as a model to study the functional connections and computation in the central nervous system. For example, she is interested in how the inhibitory projection neurons in the fly olfactory system act in parallel with excitatory projection neurons to sharpen the selectivity of higher order lateral horn neurons’ response to food odors and pheromones. She incorporates fly genetics, two-photon imaging and optogenetic methods to manipulate and record neuronal activity with high spatiotemporal resolution. Her study will help us to better understand the neural coding in the olfactory circuitry.

WHERE IS SHE NOW?

Liang is an assistant professor of neuroscience at Yale University.