BRAD DICKERSON

Principal Investigator

I conducted my graduate work at the University of Washington and was a NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow and California Alliance AGEP Fellow at Caltech. As of January 2022, I am an Assistant Professor in the Princeton Neuroscience Institute.

Join us! 

Highly motivated students and postdocs that are interested in any aspect our work and a collaborative environment are more than welcome in the lab. We are also currently looking for postdoctoral researchers, funded either on lab grants or through independent grants/fellowships. If you are a recent Ph.D. or finishing grad student thinking about what comes next, contact Brad so that we can discuss potential projects and funding. The lab also has room for and invites inquiries from undergraduate researchers in various capacities.

PAYEL CHATTERJEE

Postdoctoral Scholar

Fascinated by the physiological mechanisms of biological systems, Payel joined the laboratory of Prof. Sanjay Sane at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, India, where she was introduced to the exciting world of insect flight. During her Ph.D., Payel investigated the gaze stabilization system of hawkmoths. As a post-doc, she will look at how behavioral contexts affect haltere central inputs and downstream neck muscle activity using 2-photon calcium imaging.

ZIJIN HUANG

Graduate student

Zijin is a  PhD student in Biophysics . Prior to Princeton, she completed her B.A. in Physics and Environment & Sustainability at Cornell University, spending summers characterizing insect vision at the Air Force Research Laboratory. Zijin's research interests comprise mechanistic bases for behavior and the functional characterization of sensory encoding, more broadly speaking, elucidating how physical properties confer unique signals, morphology, and physiology.

CHLOE WIDMAN

Graduate student

Chloe is a PhD student in Biophysics. She first became interested in the intersection of biology and physics during her experimental work with bacterial motility at Brown University, where she earned her ScB in Physics in 2024. She gained a particular interest in neural systems during her summers at the University of Maryland and got practice in the fickle-yet-rewarding task of building new experimental rigs. In the Dickerson lab, she investigates how rotational forces on the haltere impact flight behavior to better understand the neural computations that underlie flight stability. When she isn't in the lab, you can find her baking, taking film photos, and biking along the towpath.

LEO WOOD

Postdoctoral scholar

My research focuses on how extreme constraints like timing shape the structure and processes of motor control. Throughout my background I’ve used animal flight as a vehicle for understanding motor control, from my Master’s at the University of British Columbia on avian wing musculature to my PhD on how spike timing precision and physical constraints inform the flight motor system of moths. I’m excited to study flies in the Dickerson lab, tracing how the precise temporal structure of their motor programs is shaped by the high wingbeat frequencies and exquisite information from the halteres.”

Alumni

ANNA VERBE 
Postdoctoral Scholar

SERENE DHAWAN
Graduate  Student

SEAN JOHNSEN
Graduate Rotation Student

YASHICA KUMAR 
Undergraduate Researcher

SOONYOUNG KWON 
Undergraduate Researcher

ANNELISE MARSH
Undergraduate Researcher

FIONA SHAW
Undergraduate Researcher

MORGAN KLEIN
Undergraduate Lab Technician

DANIEL KOZLOWSKI
Visiting graduate student

KEMPER LUDLOW
Visiting graduate student

LILLY PRICE
Lab Manager / Technician

LIZA WHITMIRE
Undergraduate Researcher

SUSAN ZUSMAN 
Lab manager/geneticist