Brief Biography
I studied biology at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany from 1992 to 1999. From 1999 to 2005 I did my PhD in the lab of Prof. Randolf Menzel at the Institut für Neurobiologie, Freie Universität Berlin. The title of my thesis was „Odor coding and neural plasticity in the mushroom body of the honeybee". From 2005 to present I am working as scientific assistant, first at the Freie Universität Berlin and since 2006 at the Universität Konstanz in the lab of Prof. C. Giovanni Galizia. My work focuses on the question how odor information is represented and transformed along the olfactory pathway in the brain of insects. I am using 1- and 2-photon calcium imaging to record odor responses in identified neurons/neuron populations in the antennal lobe and mushroom body of honeybees and Drosophila.