Albert Lin, Ph.D.

Albert Lin received a bachelor’s degree. in physics, with a certificate in biophysics, from Princeton University, and their Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University. They are interested in how brains encode sensory information and generate behavior, and how anatomical connectomes constrain experimentally observed whole-brain activity. In their graduate work in Aravinthan Samuel’s lab, Lin developed methods for recording and analyzing ensemble-level and whole-brain neural activity in the nematode C. elegans.
Currently in Mala Murthy’s lab at Princeton, Lin studies brainwide multisensory integration in Drosophila melanogaster, the fruit fly. In pursuit of this objective, they employ two-photon imaging experiments, behavior quantification methods and whole-brain connectomics data.

As part of their research work at both Harvard and Princeton, Lin has mentored many undergraduate and graduate students. In addition to teaching them basic lab skills, they aim to provide research programs which allow students to experience a cross-section of the scientific process in microcosm, including literature, biology, experiments, data analysis and presentations of their work. Students that Lin has worked with have, in the course of their work, made significant contributions and become coauthors on publications.

Principal Investigator: Mala Murthy

Fellow: Faeven Mussie

Undergraduate Fellow Project:

Many animals engage in behaviors which require information from multiple sensory modalities such as vision and sound. These streams of sensory information are integrated in the brain to generate appropriate behavioral responses.
In the Murthy Lab, we employ the fruit fly as a model system for studying the neural bases of behavior and multi-sensory integration. During courtship, male flies will sing to female flies. The female will respond to the presence of the male based both on the audio stimulus of the courtship song and the visual stimulus of the male fly. We are interested in understanding the neural basis for this multi-sensory behavior, identifying where audio and visual information are combined in the neural circuits controlling female courtship behavior.
We have collected a large behavioral dataset observing interacting pairs of flies and quantified their behavior using automated computer vision methods. From these data, we identified behavioral syllables which require both visual and auditory inputs. The project we propose is an extension of this work, investigating which neurons are required for this multi-sensory behavior by performing behavioral experiments while optogenetically activating or silencing neurons, and identifying resultant behavioral changes. This project will involve animal handling, behavior quantification and data analysis.