Michael received his B.S. from the University of Florida, where he worked at the Florida Museum of Natural History and the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera Research. While there he counted and collected butterflies in the field at sites that ranged from the Rocky Mountains to the cloud forests of Costa Rica. To begin to understand the molecular origins of the diversity he encountered in the field he shifted his focus to developmental biology and gene regulation during his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley under the mentorship of Mike Levine and Nipam Patel. He was able to combine his diverse interests in evolution and developmental biology as a postdoctoral fellow with Claude Desplan at New York University. Michael established his lab at the University of California San Diego in 2019 and is interested in the evolution and development of the nervous system and brain, and his lab uses the insect visual system as a model.
Ke did his PhD in the Evolutionary and Population Biology group at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. His PhD project worked on the causes and consequences of variation in sexual signals and responses in the night-active moths. He is now testing the function of candidate genes in color vision in the day-active butterflies.
Antoine got a Masters in Developmental biology at University Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris. He did his PhD at Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris in Sylvie Schneider-Maunoury’s lab, working on the planar polarization of the ciliated cells of the Zebrafish embryo neural tube floor-plate. He is now working on the Love Spot project as a postdoc in the lab.
Zach is a PhD student in the Biological Sciences program at UCSD. He studies how evolution has shaped the development of the mosquito visual system to adapt them to their visual ecology. Before San Diego, Zach was an undergrad at the University of Washington in Seattle and a research tech at Fred Hutch. He enjoys sci-fi, jam bands, and being bad at golf.
Julia graduated from UCLA in 2015 with a B.Sc in Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology. She got a Masters in Biology from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet in Munich in 2018.
Tim started as an undergraduate student volunteer in the Perry Lab in Fall 2019. After obtaining his Bachelor’s of Science in Biology in March 2021, he joined the lab full-time as a technician to continue his research.
Louisa is a second year Biology/Bioinformatics major. She is interested in pursuing a career in genomics and microbial genetic research. Her hobbies are cooking, playing volleyball, and going to the beach.
Crystal Diei is a third year undergraduate student studying Human Biology at UCSD. She is from Sacramento, CA. Outside of the lab, she is also a part of UCSD’s Women’s Track and Field team. She enjoys baking, traveling, and hanging out with friends and family.
Eleanor is a second-year General Biology major. She is interested in pursuing a career in conservation and ecological research. She likes dogs, trying new baking recipes, and traveling.
Riley is a “tall beagle” who thinks people food is the best. Hobbies: following the scent of bunnies and chasing lizards. Research Interests: Squirrel behavior.
