April 2024
Welcome to Justine Biscay, who is a student at Ecole Polytechnique in France, where she is majoring in Applied Mathematics. She will be a visiting intern at Behnia lab this year.
January 2024
Welcome to Sachira Denagamage who has joined the lab as a new postdoc!
Welcome to Madeline Lucille Galloway, who is a Bachelor student, majoring in Neuroscience & Behavior at Columbia University, and will be working in the lab this year.
Welcome to Elena Nicole Hardy, who is a Bachelor student, majoring in Neuroscience & Behavior at Columbia University, and will be working in the lab this year.
October 2023
Welcome to Sarita Padukone, who has joined the lab as a Research Staff Assistant
Ishani Ganguly’s preprint is now available at BioRxiv. Co-authored by Emily L. Heckman, Ashok Litwin-Kumar, E. Josephine Clowney and Rudy Behnia – Diversity of visual inputs to Kenyon cells of the Drosophila mushroom body
May 2023
Welcome to Rachel Estrella from the NBB program, who has officially joined the lab!
Lab Retreat 2023 at Luna Park, Coney Island!
APRIL 2023
Congratulations to Gonzalo Alarcon on receiving a 2023 Matthew Pecot Fellowship!!
Welcome to Valentin Maurice Dalstein, who joined the lab as an Engineer. Valentin will provide support to the team by creating, coding and building the tools needed for lab’s research
Welcome to Daphné Guérin, who is a student at Ecole Polytechnique in France, where she is majoring in Applied Mathematics and leaning towards statistical science. She will be a visiting intern at Behnia lab this year.
January 2023
Welcome to Ashley Chung, who is a Bachelor student, majoring in Neuroscience & Behavior at Columbia University, and will be working in the lab this year.
Newly elected Columbia’s 20th President, Minouche Shafik, visited the Behnia lab. (Photo credits: Eileen Barroso)
Welcome to Rachel Estrella from the NBB program, who will be rotating in the lab this spring!
DECEMBER 2022
Behnia Lab at the ZI Holiday Party!
OCtober 2022
From Memory to the Senses: Celebrating a decade of Discovery at the Zuckerman Institute
University Professor and Nobel laureate Richard Axel, MD, leads a discussion with three Principal Investigators, including Rudy, whose work showcases how the Zuckerman Institute is opening new windows into what make us, us!
Congratulations to Dr. Matthias (Gucky) Christenson on successfully defending his thesis!
September 2022
Welcome to Will Foster from the NBB program, who will be rotating in the lab this fall!
Welcome to David Gerad, who is a Master’s student, majoring in Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University, and will be working in the lab this year.
August 2022
Welcome to Gonzalo Alarcon, who is a Bachelor student, majoring in Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology at Columbia University, and will be working in the lab this year.
Rudy’s feature on ZI news - Summer Pest or Scientific Marvel?
july 2022
Sharon’s feature on ZI news - A Portrait of the Scientist: Sharon Su
Congratulations to Dr. Jacob Portes on successfully defending his thesis!
Welcome to Gabriel Yancy, who has joined the lab as a Research Staff Assistant!
Alvaro and Gucky presenting posters at FENS 2022!
june 2022
Rudy gave a talk at the FASEB SRC - The Retinal Neurobiology and Visual Processing Conference
Behnia Lab enjoying the Summer Soiree at the Zuckerman Institute!
May 2022
Rudy’s feature on Stories of Women in Neuroscience!
March 2022
Ishani, Sharon and Gucky presented posters at Cosyne 2022.
Rudy gave a talk on World Wide Neuro – ‘Connecting structure and function in early visual circuits’
Gucky’s web app is live! https://share.streamlit.io/gucky92/dreyeapp/main/app.py It’s a user friendly add on to the drEye package
https://dreye.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html, which Gucky built to design chromatic stimuli given an arbitrary set of sensitivities and light sources. See our preprint below. Give it a try and give him feedback!
Welcome to Soah Grace Franklin, who is a Bachelor of Arts student, Medical Humanities Major, at Columbia University who will be working in the lab this year.
JANUARY 2022
Matthias P. Christenson’s preprint is now available at BioRxiv. Co-authored by S.Navid Mousavi, Sarah L.Heath and Rudy Behnia – Exploiting color geometry for visual stimulus design across animals.
DECEMBER 2021
Getting our hands dirty to celebrate the end of 2021.
Jessie and Jacob’s work is now out in Current Biology: Flexible filtering by neural inputs supports motion computation across states and stimuli.
Check out the Q&A with the first co-authors and Rudy: Solving a Mystery 60 Years Old: How Insect Vision Detects Motion and the great dispatch by Kathy Nagel Motion vision: Pinning down motion computation in an ever-changing circuit.
OCTOBER 2021
Congratulations to Dr. Jessie Kohn on successfully defending her thesis!
Welcome to Ishani Ganguly from the NBB program who has now officially joined the Behnia and Litwin-Kumar labs!
SEPTEMBER 2021
Welcoming new lab members. Celebrating grant and papers!
Welcome to Jasmine Stone from the NBB program, who will be rotating in the lab this fall.
August 2021
Welcome to Atsuko Adachi who has joined the lab as the Senior Staff Associate.
MAY 2021
Congratulations to Dr. Sarah Heath on successfully defending her thesis!
APRIL 2021
Welcome to Abby Wood from the NBB program, who will be rotating in the lab this spring.
Jessie and Jacob’s work on motion computation is now live on bioRxiv!
MARCH 2021
Welcome to Sharon Su and Andrew Po Fung Liu who have now officially joined our lab! Sharon is from the NBB program and Andrew is from the Physics program!
Welcome to Ishani Ganguly, who will be rotating in the lab from NBB program Theory track.
JANUARY 2021
Welcome to Sharon Su, who will be rotating in the lab this spring.
Welcome to Andrew Po Fung Liu, who will be rotating in the lab this spring.
NOVEMBER 2020
Welcome to Irene Margarit, who is a Master’s student in Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University who will be working in the lab this year.
SEPTEMBER 2020
Welcome to Shravan Karthik, who is a Master’s student at Columbia University who will be working in the lab this year.
Welcome to Nova Qi, from the Integrated Doctoral Program who will be rotating in the lab this fall.
JULY 2020
Social distancing lab picnic and farewell to Tommy who is returning to Hong Kong.
JUNE 2020
Welcome to Elom Amematsro, from the Neurobiology and Behavior Doctoral Program, who will be rotating this summer in the lab. He is co-mentored by Ashok Litwin-Kumar.
Welcome to Nick Manfred, who is an undergrad at Columbia University, who will be working in the lab this year (remotely).
The lab reopens, partially.
MAY 2020
Welcome to Rhythm Sharma, our new lab manager! Best wishes to Melba, who will be moving on to the Salzman lab at the Zuckerman Institute.
MARCH 2020
Curious Minds: How do flies see in color? Featuring Matthias Christenson and Sarah Heath on Zuckerman Institute website. Video posted by National Science Foundation featuring Matthias Christenson and Sarah Heath.
Lab lockdown, only essential personal can be in the lab to maintain animals.
FEBRUARY 2020
Welcome to Jon Kasdin from the Neurobiology and Behavior Doctoral Program who is doing a rotation in the lab this semester.
JANUARY 2020
Welcome to Tommy Lam, a student from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) who is our new intern.
Our paper investigating peripheral color circuits in the fly brain is out today. Check out the nice write up about this work on the Zuckerman website. Congratulations to all the authors, especially Sarah and Matthias!
DECEMBER 2019
Celebrating the acceptance of our paper!
OCTOBER 2019
Our paper “Circuit mechanisms underlying chromatic encoding in Drosophila photoreceptors” is now on bioRxiv.
JULY 2019
Lab picnic in Central Park!
Congratulations to Sarah Heath on being awarded an NSRA Fellowship!
JUNE 2019
Rudy was named 2019 Pew Scholar.
APRIL 2019
Welcome to Sami Mollard and Michael Sander, students in the Ingénieur Polytechnicien Program at École Polytechnique, who are interning in the lab this Spring and Summer.
FEBRUARY 2019
Happy International Day of Women & Girls in Science!
JULY 2018
Enjoying a nice lunch out celebrating all of our accomplishments!
Congratulations to Jessica Kohn on being awarded a Gilliam Fellowship for Advance Study from HHMI and an NSRA Fellowship!
JUNE 2018
Rudy receives the McKnight Foundation Neuroscience Scholars Award.
APRIL 2018
Welcome to Elie Oriol, a student in the Ingénieur Polytechnicien Program at École Polytechnique, who is interning in the lab this Spring and Summer.
Our review on matched filters in neural circuits for vision and their modulation is out. Read it here.
Members of our lab, Jacob Portes and Jessica Kohn will be hosting a community outreach event on Wednesday, April 18th called “Late Night Science” Come join us!
JANUARY 2018
New year, new building! We have officially moved into our beautiful new space in the Jerome L. Greene science center: https://zuckermaninstitute.columbia.edu/jerome-l-greene-science-center
Rudy is now a member of the Kavli Institute for Brain Science http://kavli.columbia.edu/members.
HAPPY 2018
Celebrating the new year with a hands on pottery class!
OCTOBER 2017
Welcome to Álvaro Sanz-Diez, who just joined the lab as a postdoctoral researcher!
SEPTEMBER 2017
Welcome to Jacob Portes from the Neurobiology and Behavior Doctoral Program, who just joined the lab! He is co-advised by Larry Abbott from the Center for Theoretical Neuroscience.
JULY 2017
Welcome to Matthias Christenson from the Neurobiology and Behavior Doctoral Program, who just joined the lab!
JUNE 2017
PBS’s Treasures of New York series recently aired its full episode on the Jerome L. Greene Science center.
Welcome to Jacob Portes from the Neurobiology and Behavior Doctoral Program, who is rotating this Summer. He is co-advised by Larry Abbott from the Center for Theoretical Neuroscience.
APRIL 2017
Rudy was interviewed on PBS for an upcoming Treasures of New York episode on the Jerome L. Greene Science Center. A preview can be found here.
Rudy was named Grossman-Kavli Scholar.
Welcome to Matthias Christenson from the Neurobiology and Behavior Doctoral Program, who is rotating this Spring and Summer.
MARCH 2017
We were recently featured in an article by Columbia News!
Welcome to Jean Fatien, a 3rd year student in the Ingénieur Polytechnicien Program at École Polytechnique, who is interning in the lab this Spring and Summer.
JANUARY 2017
Welcome to Marissa Applegate and Sana Chintamen from the Neurobiology and Behavior Doctoral Program, who are rotating this Winter.
NOVEMBER 2016
Touring our future lab spaces in the Jerome L. Greene Science Center:
OCTOBER 2016
Our 2-photon microscope is now up and running! A test run:
JULY 2016
Welcome to Jeremy Chang, our new research assistant.
APRIL 2016
The Behnia lab is featured on the Zuckerman Mind Brain and Behavior Institute website.
Welcome to Sarah Heath, who is now officially the first graduate student of the Behnia lab!
JANUARY 2016
A big welcome to rotation students Jessica Kohn and Sarah Heath! Both from the Neurobiology and Behavior Doctoral Program.
