Michael Schmuker is Professor of Neural Computation at the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield, UK. He translates processes from biology into algorithms for machine olfaction, with the dual aim to understand biological principles of neural computation and to improve electronic chemical sensing. Within the Odor2Action network, Michael will collaborate with experimental biologists and fluid dynamics experts to explore how insects and animals exploit the information present in turbulent odor plumes for navigation. He will integrate the findings into robotic models that are controlled by realistic models of the olfactory systems of insects and vertebrates.

Katherine Nagel is an Associate Professor of Neuroscience at NYU School of Medicine. Her lab uses the model organism Drosophila to study multi-sensory integration and the neural basis of sensory-motor transformations. Using quantitative behavioral assays, whole-cell electrophysiology, imaging, genetics, and computational modeling, her lab seeks to identify complete neural circuits underlying olfactory navigation in turbulent environments.

Matt Wachowiak is a Professor in the Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, University of Utah School of Medicine. His research focuses on understanding how neurons process olfactory information as an animal smells an odor. The lab uses optical reporters to directly visualize neural activity in genetically- and anatomically-defined neuron populations in the early stages of the olfactory pathway – in particular in the olfactory bulb. The Wachowiak lab has long collaborated with molecular biologists and computational neuroscientists to develop improved tools for interrogating neural circuits and to model how circuits function at the network level.

Jonathan D. Victor M.D., Ph.D. is a systems and computational neuroscientist with a background in mathematics, visual neuroscience, and clinical neurophysiology. He is Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience in the Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute and the Fred Plum Professor of Neurology at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, where he serves as site PI for the Odor2Action Network. He has a long-term interest in the application of information-theoretic approaches to biology, especially neural coding, and his laboratory’s collaborative research will investigate strategies for active sensation of the olfactory environment in spatial, temporal, and chemical dimensions.

Dr. Stowers obtained her PhD at Harvard University in 1997. She then joined Catherine Dulac’s lab as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Post-doctoral Fellow to undertake the study of how the brain translates odor sensation into fundamental social and survival behavior. In 2002 she began independent work at Scripps Research where she remains today as a Professor of Neuroscience. Her lab aims to understand basic rules of how the brain works to survey both the environment and immediate internal needs to decide appropriate behavior. She has been a finalist for the Eppendorf & Science Prize for Neurobiology; and named a Pew Scholar and Ellison Medical Foundation Senior Scholar in Neuroscience.

Andreas Schaefer leads the Sensory Circuits and Neurotechnology Laboratory as a group leader and assistant research director at the Francis Crick Institute and is a Professor of Neuroscience at University College London (UCL). His lab uses electrophysiological, imaging, behavioural, optogenetic, and computational tools to dissect information processing in the mouse olfactory bulb. As part of the Odor2Action network, Andreas’ lab will collaborate with other PIs on the role of active sensing (sniffing and antenna flicking) in shaping behavioural abilities (such as navigation) and neural representation of smells.

Nathan Urban is Provost and Professor of Biological Sciences at Lehigh University. Previously he has held faculty positions at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. Urban’s interests focus on how brain circuits perform the computations that underlie behavior, with a focus on the olfactory circuitry. Urban’s lab pursues these interests through a combination of physiology, imaging, computational modeling and behavior.

Smith has maintained a long-standing research program into how associative and nonassociative plasticity modify odor guided behavior and early olfactory processing in the brain. His lab investigates how these learning capabilities work together in different contexts to regulate decision making about statistical properties of odor environments. He has also investigated how heritable differences in learning plays a role in how social groups respond to different environments as a function of the genotypic composition of groups. He is part of the ‘Active Sensing’ group in Odor2Action, focusing on how insect antennae actively sample the environment. He has developed a program for training PhD students and postdoctoral researchers to understand how to work in both large and small teams of researchers in order to investigate complex problems that require a multidisciplinary approach.

Elizabeth (Betty) Hong is the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, CA. Her lab uses electrophysiological, functional imaging, and molecular genetic methods to investigate the synaptic and circuit mechanisms by which insect brains process and respond to chemical signals, using primarily the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as an experimental model. As part of the Odor2Action network, her lab will collaborate with other PIs to test the hypothesis that neural representations of odor in the fly brain are organized around the statistical relationships of odors in natural odor sources behaviorally important to the fly. She is the lead PI for Interdisciplinary Research Group 1.

Since 2007 Justus has managed his own lab at the John B. Pierce Laboratory in CT, USA. His lab has explored multimodal retronasal smell coding in the rat and mouse OB, odor navigation and new “realistic” mouse models of sporadic Alzheimer’s Disease. His lab uses optical intrinsic and calcium imaging, multimodal optical-fMRI imaging in collaboration with Dr. Fahmeed Hyder and Gordon Shepherd, electrophysiology, objective behavioral evaluations (incl Noldus and custom solutoins), and optogenetics, combined as needed. He has been funded by NIH/NIDCD and NSF. He is a full Fellow at the J.B. Pierce Laboratory and Associate Professor at the Department of Neuroscience, Yale School of Medicine.

Bard Ermentrout is a mathematical biologist who received his PhD from University of Chicago and has been on the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh since 1982. He applies the techniques of nonlinear dynamics to problems in biology. His research has focused mainly on neuroscience but has also worked on problems in immunology, cardiac physiology, pattern formation, and self-organization of organisms. He will collaborate with the experimental investigators to develop mechanistic models for olfactory behavior.

Tatyana Sharpee’s lab seeks to understand how the brain and other biological systems work while their components are constantly changing. For example, when a baby is growing, new neurons are added to circuits. During adulthood, connections between neurons are constantly added and removed as we learn new skills and information. As we age, we begin to lose some functionality of these connections. Despite these changes, we maintain a constant sense of self and can remember events for decades. Even within individual neurons, proteins are constantly updated, yet the right balance is achieved to ensure appropriate signaling by them. Nevertheless, we maintain the same sense of “self” and can remember events for decades. Further exacerbating the problem, the environment in which the brain operates is constantly changing, so Sharpee and colleagues are working to understand optimal signals that the brain should pay attention to in the environment, and to understand optimal prescriptions for adaptation to changes in the environment.

Tomoko Ohyama is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Biology at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Using larvae of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as an experimental model, her lab collects behavior trajectory data and employs functional imaging as well as molecular genetics techniques to investigate the neural circuits underlying action selection. As part of the Odor2Action network, her lab will collaborate with other PIs to understand how neural circuits translate odor signals into dynamic and adaptive behaviors.

Hiroaki Matsunami is Professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, and Neurobiology at Duke University School of Medicine. His lab primarily uses molecular neurobiology, genetic, functional genomic and cell biology methods to investigate how odorant receptors interact with odorants, how odorant receptor activation leads odor percept and how the olfactory system is organized. His lab primarily uses mice and human. He is a member of Interdisciplinary Research Group 1.

John Crimaldi is Associate Chair and Professor of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering at the University of Colorado, where his research focuses on interactions between fluid physics and ecological or biological processes. He uses a combination of experimental and numerical approaches to study fluid stirring and mixing, and to investigate how organisms have evolved and adapted to opportunities and constraints imposed by their physical environment. Within the Odor2Action network, Crimaldi is collaborating with other investigators to understand how sensor morphology and kinematics impact perception of ambient spatiotemporal odor plume structure. Crimaldi is the lead PI for the Odor2Action network.

Andy Monaghan is the High Performance Computing specialist for the Odor2Action Network. Based at CU Boulder, Andy connects researchers across the network to CU Boulder's Research Computing infrastructure. Andy has been involved with HPC since 2002, specializing in meteorological modeling as a researcher. Andy received a BS in Civil Engineering from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and a PhD in Atmospheric Sciences from The Ohio State University.

Andrew Johnson, MLIS is Associate Professor and Director of the Data and Scholarly Communication Services Initiative in the Center for Research Data and Digital Scholarship (CRDDS) at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he leads campus research data management and curation efforts and overall strategy for the CU Scholar open access repository. His primary role for the Odor2Action network is to oversee digital data management, archiving, and publishing. His current research interests focus on emerging services and infrastructure for research data management/curation and open science, particularly with regard to interdisciplinary and highly collaborative research.

Daniel Knight is the Odor2Action Network Internal Evaluator. Dr. Knight is based within the network and responsible for assisting project PIs and network investigators in tracking progress against project goals. Dr. Knight’s tasks will include annual goal setting, tracking of progress against goals, development of assessment tools, data collection and analysis, as well as reporting of results. He will also work with the external evaluators to facilitate a review of the network. Dr. Knight has worked as an evaluator for the National Science Foundation for the past twenty years.

Kate Cochran is the Project Manager for the Odor2Action Network. She oversees the network activities, helps strengthen team relationships, and works to foster synergy across the network. Kate is based in the Department of Civil, Environmental, & Architectural Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, and she has extensive experience managing federally-funded interdisciplinary research groups. In her work, she draws from a diverse set of skills in public health, psychology, and behavioral ecology. Kate received a BSc from Rutgers University and her Masters of Public Health at the Colorado School of Public Health.