Hi! My name is Janka and I’m a PhD student in Stanley Heinze’s lab. I’m fascinated by the neural basis of navigation, especially how insects can perform complex behaviours with very small brains. With bumblebees as my model organism, I am trying to find out how visual input is used for navigation using both electrophysiology and computational modelling.
I received my bachelor’s degree in biotechnology from the Technical University of Berlin, and discovered my fascination for the neural basis of animal behaviour during my thesis work at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, where I performed deep brain calcium imaging in freely behaving mice. I then decided to focus my studies on neuroscience and got a master’s degree in biomedical engineering with a focus on neurotechnology from Imperial College London. During my master I started working with insects, investigating the neural representation of aeroelasticity in dragonflies using extracellular electrophysiology.
Now, my PhD project under the supervision of Stanley Heinze focuses on the visual input pathways to the central complex, a brain region involved in many navigational tasks. Using intracellular electrophysiology and computational modelling, I want to find out which sensory cues bumblebees use and how they are integrated to make navigational decisions.
