Budha Chowdhury, Ph.D.

Budha’s research interests encompass genetic and neurobiological understanding of animal behavior. He obtained his Master’s degree in Zoology from Visva-Bharati University, India. An Indian Academy of Sciences (IAS) fellowship funded his thesis on metapopulation dynamic modeling in Drosophila in the lab of Dr. Amitabh Joshi at Jawaharlal Nehru Center for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR). He carried out his PhD work at the J.P. Scott Center for Neuroscience, Mind, and Behavior at Bowling Green State University (BGSU) under the tutelage of Dr. Robert Huber and Dr. Moira van Staaden. Here, he established quantitative behavioral methods to study large-scale open field movement in dogs using GPS data loggers and computational analysis tools. He joined the lab of Prof. Edward A. Kravitz at the Neurobiology Department at Harvard Medical School to study molecular basis of social behavior in Drosophila in 2012. During his time at the Kravitz Lab he identified critical developmental windows and a transmembrane transporter that modulates social behavior in Drosophila. While at Baylor College of Medicine in the lab of Dr. Herman Dierick he developed a video based high-throughput behavioral pipeline to study and quantify long-term behaviors using machine learning platforms.

Budha Joined the Shafer Lab at ASRC-CUNY to study sleep regulation in Drosophila. He is working on building video-based, real-time behavioral platforms to dissect the relationship between the homeostatic and the circadian control of sleep timing.

Outside the lab, Budha can be found in volleyball or tennis courts, independent bookstores, and art museums.

Publications

Email

bchowdhury@gc.cuny.edu