Malavika Murugan

Malavika Murugan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at Emory University's College of Arts and Sciences. Her research investigates the neural mechanisms underlying social behavior, with particular focus on how the brain processes social information to enable recognition and social decision-making. She directs the Murugan Lab at Rollins Research Center.

Murugan's work combines cellular-resolution imaging, optogenetics, electrophysiology, and quantitative behavioral analysis to understand neural circuits for social recognition. Her research examines how brain regions encode social novelty, reward valuation, and group affiliation preferences. Recent studies investigate sex differences in social reward processing and hippocampal-septal pathways regulating social novelty detection.

Her laboratory develops automated behavioral assays for social reward-seeking and maps brainwide inputs to behaviorally-relevant circuits. These approaches reveal how interconnected neural systems transform social sensory information into adaptive behaviors.

Murugan holds a PhD from Duke University and B.Tech from Vellore Institute of Technology. She teaches neuroscience and biology courses at Emory College.