Tested Flies with the Joystick

Reinforcement

PKG 2_descr_anal

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Our graduate student, Christian Rohrsen, was so fortunate to receive grant funding for a six-month research stay in the laboratory of Benjamin de Bivort at Harvard University. All of us here are very excited at this opportunity and are wishing him all the best of luck with his projects there!

With all our undergraduate students graduating and our graduate student on research leave, the lab has now shrunk to two people plus our technician. Looks like it’s going to be lonely for a while.

I just received the Bachelor theses from Isabelle Steymans and Bianca Birk. Both have worked tirelessly and diligently on their respective projects, but with very different outcomes. While both outcomes are very useful, one managed to answer a scientific question, while the other showed that the method we tried did not work. Research often is this unfair, with discovery acting more like a capricious belladonna than even a lottery. Research results are, of course, impossible to predict, so the difference in outcome will not affect their grades.

We are very happy with the work of these two students, we enjoyed their time with us and hope they also enjoyed their research here in our lab. All the best to you two!

Two students have recently left our lab, Katrin Hofweber and Amelie Rödel. Katrin was a master’s student working on the role of dopaminergic neurons in reward/punishment using optogenetics. Amelie’s task was to find out what, if any, temperature had on the photopreference of flies. She summarized her work in her Bachelor thesis entitled “Temperature impact on phototactic preference in Drosophila melanogaster“

Farewell you two, we enjoyed having you in the lab and will always be happy seeing you again. Good luck and all the best!

After more than four months in our lab, we said good bye to Pablo Martinez (between Axel and Christian in the picture below).

He worked tirelessly to collect data on spontaneous flight behavior using strokelitude. We have enjoyed his visit tremendously and wish him all the best in his future research endeavors. Many thanks, Pablo!

The next students to leave the lab will be Amelie Roedel, Isabelle Steymans and Bianca Birk, who are writing up their theses right now.