Dr. Anita Devineni

Anita is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute whose research looks at the interaction between taste and smell in the fruit fly. In particular, she discovered that hungry fruit flies are attracted to acetic acid but averse to this same stimulus when they’re well-fed, suggesting that hunger can change the valence of a taste stimulus. Anita describes the path her research has taken throughout grad school and as a postdoc--both the ups and downs--and how after some challenges in the lab she reinvigorated her passion for neuroscience by starting her own blog. In her interview with Nancy, she goes back even further to a spring break in high school where a beach read--not a science class--sparked an interest in the link between a person’s DNA and their behavior. This experience, along with her love of Star Trek, were among the first pivotal moments in a chain reaction that propelled her toward the scientific field and have shaped her into the distinguished neuroscientist she is today.