Congratulations, Dr. Kyra Burnett!

Our newest PhD graduate successfully defended her thesis, “High-throughput and High-resolution Functional Imaging Methods to Identify Mechanisms of Variable Neural Excitability in C. elegans“. Congratulations to Dr. Kyra Burnett!  In this dissertation, Kyra explored neural responses to a repeated stimulus whose neural response could change minute-to-minute, or remain consistent, identifying the neurons detecting novel stimuli, and developing methods to study this regulation of neural excitability further. In particular, she developed hydrogel immobilization methods that allow optical neural recordings in healthy animals for hours, in both widefield and light-sheet microscopes. In the future, we will use these methods to understand how variability arises via regulated neural excitability, which plays a role an many neuropsychiatric disorders.