Dr. Annika Barber

Dr. Annika Barber is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry and a laboratory director at the Waksman Institute beginning January 2020. Dr. Barber uses the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, to investigate how neuropeptide signaling is involved in integrating a myriad of sensory cues to select behavioral programs. Her work integrates genetics, behavior and neurophysiology. Dr. Barber got her Bachelor of Science at Bryn Athyn College. She did her doctoral work at Thomas Jefferson University with Manuel Covarrubias, mapping binding sites for inhaled anesthetics in voltage gated ion channels and developing Markov models of how anesthetics impair channel gating. Dr. Barber moved from single cell patch clamp electrophysiology to Drosophila behavior when she started her Postdoctoral Fellowship with Amita Sehgal at the University of Pennsylvania. In her postdoc, Dr. Barber investigated how a circadian output region regulates sleep, feeding and metabolic function. This piqued her interest in understanding the complex interplay of neuropeptides in Drosophila behavioral circuitry.