GRADUATE STUDENTS
I do not admit graduate students directly to the lab. Prospective graduate students apply through the graduate programs in bioscience. Applications to my lab can be directed to two different GPB “home areas”: Neuroscience and Molecular, Cellular, and Integrative Physiology. Students admitted through either of these two programs then do a research rotation in my lab during their first year. Current first-year students please contact me for information about rotation availability.
WORK ENVIRONMENT
UCLA is a terrific place to do PhD or postdoc training in neuroscience. The campus hosts a diverse group of outstanding laboratories, including many fly labs. There are numerous seminars, affinity groups, and centers of excellence to expand your training and professional development. Los Angeles is a socially diverse and culturally enriched city, with remarkable climate for humans, and myriad outdoor adventure opportunities. The lab is housed in a new building with state-of-the-art experimental equipment including flight and walking simulators, optogenetics, two-photon in vivo imaging and holographic optogenetics microscopy, electrophysiology, confocal scanning and stereoscope fluorescence microscopy, and a fly dedicated rearing facility.
LIVING ENVIRONMENT
Los Angeles may be a terrible place to visit; the tourist sights are spread out over distance across highways. But, it’s a great place to live: my family and I bike to school every day, surf, ski, hike, enjoy great cuisine, Dodger baseball, outdoor rock shows, the LA philharmonic, Koreatown, Chinatown, and Olvera Street. It is really easy to keep your car parked, find your local microcosm in this culturally diverse cosmopolitan city with a Mediterranean climate. Here are a few of my own recent experiences here in CA and nearby. But don’t take my word for it, listen to Israel Nash.