2008 Janelia Graduate Scholars

Arjun Bharioke
University of Cambridge
Major: Theoretical Neuroscience
Janelia Mentor: Dmitri Chklovskii

Arjun Bharioke is the second student in the Janelia/Cambridge joint graduate program, and he started in the fall of 2008. He is now working with Simon Laughlin in Cambridge, and expects to return to Janelia in the fall 2009 to do his thesis work with Dmitri Chklovskii (Group Leader) where he plans to compare different cost functions in order to derive the functional properties of neurons.

Bharioke's passion for neurobiology was evident early in his life. As its youngest participant, he won the 2001 International Brain Bee, a competition focused on modern advances in neuroscience. Following this, Bharioke worked at Toronto's Samuel Lunenfield Research Institute (SLRI) with Professor Sabine Cordes studying the serotonergic system in a mouse model of hyperactivity. During high school, Bharioke also represented Canada in the 2003 IChO in Athens, as well as winning the National Biology Competition of Canada twice in a row.

Bharioke, then, went on to pursue a wide variety of both experimental and theoretical research opportunities while obtaining a double major in Chemical Physics and Biochemistry, with a minor in Mathematics from the University of Toronto. He did lab work with Professor Katherine Siminovitch, also of the SLRI, characterizing the role of an actin organizing protein, N-WASp, in mouse brain-specific conditional knockouts. Concurrently, Bharioke also worked with University Professor, Professor Paul Brumer, exploring theoretical problems in quantum mechanics, focusing on the control of system dynamics. This work was published, in August 2008, in the Journal of Chemical Physics. In addition, Bharioke also did his fourth year thesis project with Professor Geoffrey Hinton, working on modifying current neural network learning algorithms in order to make them biologically realistic.

Bharioke first came to Janelia as a Summer undergraduate student in 2007 in Dr. Karel Svoboda's lab where he studied the neural coding of sensory perception in the somatosensory barrel cortex.

Outside the lab, Bharioke plays intramural Division I Ultimate Frisbee, scuba dives, and also holds a Private Pilot's License. An avid lover of nature, he enjoys birdwatching, photography, as well as hiking - in Cambridge, he is a member of the Hill Walking Society. With a keen interest in different areas of science, Bharioke, also, previously organized two university-wide symposia on Space Research and Exploration.

Rudolf (Rudi) Faust
University of Chicago
Major: Neurobiology
Janelia Mentor: Alla Karpova

Rudolf (Rudi) Faust is the first Janelia Farm graduate student and is a member of the Janelia/University of Chicago joint program. He joined in the fall of 2007 and spent the 2007/8 academic year at the university doing coursework and rotations. He is now at Janelia doing his thesis research with Alla Karpova (Janelia group leader). Faust's Chicago advisor is Xiaoxi Zhuang (Department of Neurobiology, University of Chicago). Faust aims to explore the neural substrates underlying the suppression of drug seeking and taking by punishment.

Faust received his B.S. from Stanford University in Biological Sciences with a specialization in Neurobiology. His undergraduate honors thesis research was in the laboratory of Robert C. Malenka. He worked on finding a behavioral correlate of cocaine-induced potentiation of synaptic strength in ventral tegmental area dopamine neurons. After graduating from Stanford, he worked in the laboratory of John Huguenard at Stanford's Medical School. There he was part of an EEG study of anticonvulsant efficacy on pharmacological models of absence epilepsy in transgenic mice. After graduation Faust worked in the laboratory of David Sulzer at Columbia University's Medical Center and examined the mechanisms of dopamine neuron degeneration induced by neuromelanin activation of microglia.

Rudi Faust is an avid follower of underground music and has volunteered for several such event production companies. He also enjoys hiking and backpacking.

Arbora Resulaj
University of Cambridge
Major: Biomedical Engineering
Janelia Mentor: Dmitry Rinberg

Arbora Resulaj is the first student in the Janelia/University of Cambridge joint graduate program and started in January 2008. She is now in Cambridge, working with Professor Daniel Wolpert to investigate why people occasionally change their mind in simple tasks even though there is no additional information provided. This is a joint project with Dr. Michael Shadlen and Roozbeh Kiani from University of Washington. They have found that the changes of mind are based on late information that is still wending its way through the processing pipeline when the initial decision is made. They can model this process to explain both the frequency of changes of mind as well as their dependence on both task difficulty and whether the initial decision was accurate or erroneous. Arbora plans to return to Janelia in January 2009 to undertake her thesis research with Dmitry Rinberg (Janelia Fellow). She plans a top-down approach to understanding odor processing in the olfactory bulb in an effort to determine its neuronal assemblies and how their responses evolve during odor discrimination. “I love the atmosphere at Cambridge”, Resulaj reports. She started rowing for her college senior team there and is bartending for fun every other Friday.

Resulaj obtained her Bachelor of Applied Sciences in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Toronto in 2007. During this time, she worked under Dr. Robert Macgregor studying the mechanism and kinetics of the self-assembly of the DNA sequence A15G15. She was also a summer student and then went on to complete her undergraduate thesis in the laboratory of Rita Kandel at Mount Sinai Hospital. Resulaj set up and optimized the conditions of a perfusion bioreactor for annulus fibrosus tissue formation and then calculated the mechanical forces to which the cells were exposed during tissue formation.

Resulaj initially came to Janelia as a summer undergraduate student in 2007, also with Dmitry Rinberg (Janelia Fellow). She developed a respiratory measuring technique for use in freely moving mice that allows a continuous sniffing signal to be recorded while the mice are learning or performing a behavioral task.

John Tuthill
University of Chicago
Major: Honors Biology and Sociology/Anthropology
Janelia Mentor: Michael Reiser

John Tuthill is the second student in our joint Ph.D. program with the University of Chicago and he started in the fall of 2008. He is currently at the University of Chicago, taking neuroscience courses and doing lab rotations. He plans to return to Janelia to do his graduate research in the lab of Michael Reiser (Janelia Fellow), studying multisensory neural circuits in flying fruit flies.

Tuthill graduated from Swarthmore in 2006 with a double major in Honors Biology and Sociology/Anthropology. At Swarthmore, he worked with Rachel Merz on measuring and modeling the spore discharge mechanism of the fungi, Pilobolus Crystallinus. Tuthill also studied Drosophila gustatory mechanisms in the Siwicki lab by silencing populations of neurons and quantifying the robustness of courtship learning. He spent a summer with Sönke Johnsen at Duke University testing the behavioral responses of crayfish to polarized light. After graduating, Tuthill continued to explore visual sensitivity to polarized light in crabs, while working in the laboratory of Daniel Tomsic in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He discovered that crayfish use polarization sensitivity to enhance contrast of an approaching object; crabs, on the other hand, do not.

Outside the neurobiology lab at Swarthmore, John received an award for the best senior thesis in Sociology/Anthropology. He has made two films: “An Elder's Story”, about Chester PA (shown on Pennsylvania public television) and “Another Man's Treasure”, about junkyards (shown at the Maine International Film Festival). He has done extensive volunteer work with children and worked in a food bank. He's also a cabinetmaker and plays the tuba.

Photos: Bharioke, Paul Fetters; Faust, Resulaj, and Tuthill, courtesy of Janelia Farm Research Campus.