Durafshan Sakeena Syed

Durafshan Sakeena Syed is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), affiliated with the Julie Simpson Lab in the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology. Her research focuses on understanding how inhibitory and descending neural circuits coordinate sequential actions, particularly during fruit fly grooming behaviors. She holds a PhD from the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS-TIFR), Bangalore, and conducted collaborative research at the University of Basel, Switzerland, investigating motor neuron development in fruit flies.

Dr. Syed’s educational background includes a Master of Science in Biotechnology from the University of Kashmir, supported by a fellowship from the Department of Biotechnology (India), with prior research at the Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine (CSIR). Her work bridges developmental neurobiology and behavioral neuroscience, emphasizing the interplay between neurons, glia, and muscles in enabling locomotion and flight in Drosophila.

Her research interests span neural circuitry underlying behavior, motor neuron architecture, and the role of inhibition in action selection. Notable contributions include studies on synaptic connectivity in premotor networks and the cellular mechanisms of muscular dystrophy. Her recent publications highlight advancements in mapping inhibitory circuits and descending neuron roles in grooming sequence generation.

Awarded a fellowship from India’s Department of Biotechnology, her work has been featured in journals exploring both fundamental neuroscience and translational applications like nanotherapeutics for muscular disorders. She collaborates across institutions, contributing to projects such as undergraduate-driven neural circuit mapping using electron microscopy datasets.