Interests

I am interested in how nervous systems combine robustness with diversity. Developmental processes reliably establish core circuits within a species, yet individuals still show variation. My research focuses on the genetic and developmental mechanisms underlying variability in behavior and neural circuits. During my PhD, I investigated how genetic variation shapes natural variation in hitchhiking behavior of C. elegans wild strains.
In the Desplan lab, I study the neurodevelopment of the Drosophila visual system. The fly eye consists of ~800 unit eyes that are stochastically specified into two subtypes, creating a unique retinal mosaic even within the same genetic background. I am currently investigating how stochastic variation in photoreceptor cell fate is integrated to build robust color vision circuits.