Valentina Emiliani
Université Paris Descartes
Toward circuit optogenetics
12:00 pm, Friday 16 February 2018
Location: Oxford Martin School, Broad Street, Oxford
Abstract: Parallel holographic illumination has emerged as a technique of choice for two-photon optogenetic control of neuronal circuits organized in three dimensions. Complementary variants of 3D holographic illumination are optimized for simplicity, temporal precision, or axial resolution. The possibility of reaching hundreds of targets in 3D volumes has prompted the development of low-repetition-rate amplified laser sources that achieve high total exit power while keeping low the average power exposure of each cell. These advances allow neuronal circuits distributed between different brain areas to be optically interrogated and controlled with millisecond temporal precision and single-cell resolution. I will review past accomplishments and necessary future developments in circuit optogenetics.
Biography: Valentina Emiliani obtained her PhD in physics at the University ‘La Sapienza’ in Rome in 1997 and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Born Institute in Berlin. In 2000, she started her independent career at the European Laboratory for Nonlinear Spectroscopy (associated with the University of Florence) and in 2002 moved to the Institut Jacques Monod in Paris, where she began work at the interface of physics and biology. She established and directed the Neurophotonics Laboratory at the Université Paris Descartes and is currently relocating her group to the Institut de la Vision, also in Paris. Valentina was awarded the Prix “Coups d’élan pour la recherche française” from the Bettencourt-Schueller foundation in 2015.