NBIO Presents: Pavan Ramdya, PhD (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne)

“How flies learn to engage with objects and each other”

A central goal shared by neuroscience and robotics is to understand how systems can navigate and act autonomously in complex environments. While extensive research has revealed how the visual system segments natural scenes into distinct components—insights that have inspired advances in computer vision and robotics—the next crucial challenge remains: learning the properties of these objects and responding appropriately. In this talk, I will present our work using the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster to investigate how the brain learns about objects and other animals in its environment, and how it uses that information to guide behavior. By integrating quantitative behavioral analysis, genetic manipulation, connectomics, and neural recordings, we aim to uncover the neural mechanisms that enable flexible, adaptive interactions with the world.

Health Sciences G328 and Zoom