I grew up in Izmir, Turkey and earned my dual BS/MS degrees in Biology from Pennsylvania State University, Schreyer Honors Program, where I characterized a novel inhibitory neurotransmitter plasticity in the CNS under Dr. Gong Chen. During my PhD work in the laboratory of Dr. Gord Fishell at NYU School of Medicine, I studied the development of forebrain circuits. My dissertation work highlighted a transient circuit among subtypes of cortical interneurons and thalamus even before active whisking critical for the establishment of somatosensory inputs to the cortex of mature mice.  Given that developmental insults to interneurons are implicated as the underlying etiology of numerous neurological diseases, this unanticipated developmental cooperation between subtypes interneurons represents a critical step in understanding how defects in interneurons manifest in disease.

To study neural circuit plasticity in vivo with a focus on mouse models that are relevant to psychiatric disorders, I joined Dr. Rene Hen’s laboratory at Columbia. My work has shown a novel diversity in neural firing dynamics within the hippocampal dentate gyrus population that supports parallel processing of sensory cue and spatial information. In a parallel set of studies, I found that adult hippocampal neurogenesis increases the neural discrimination of different contexts by selectively increasing remapping of spatial and decreasing the remapping sensory cue encoding populations in the dentate gyrus. Using an integrative approach that merges in vivo imaging, mouse transgenic strategies as well as computational analysis of multi-neuronal activity, I will continue to explore the individual components of the circuit mediating contextual memory discrimination and elucidate the key developmental mechanisms by which this network is formed.

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