Luis Hernandez-Nunez, Ph.D.

Luis Hernandez-Nunez is a Warren Alpert Distinguished Scholar and a Life Sciences Research Foundation (LSRF) postdoctoral fellow in the laboratories of Florian Engert and Mark Fishman at Harvard University and a visiting scientist at the HHMI Janelia Research Campus. His research is focused on the circuit mechanisms for heart-brain interactions in zebrafish. He has also been awarded a Burroughs Wellcome Career Award at the Scientific Interface to support his transition to a junior faculty position and a Branco Weiss Society in Science Fellowship to support his research for the next five years. Hernandez-Nunez obtained his Ph.D. in systems biology from Harvard in 2020. He conducted his doctoral research in Aravinthan Samuel’s lab, where he discovered molecules, cells and circuits that mediate thermal homeostasis in larval Drosophila. Before graduate school, he was an undergraduate and then a postbac researcher in Thierry Emonet’s lab at Yale University. Prior to moving to the U.S., he studied mechatronics engineering at the National University of Engineering in Peru.

Principal Investigator: Florian Engert

Fellow: Gracie Wang and Maanasa Mendu

Undergraduate Fellow Project:

Our project is focused on studying the neural mechanisms that mediate cardiac modulation of brain function and brain modulation of cardiac function from a systems-level perspective. Even though the heart-brain communication axis is central for homeostasis, our understanding of this pathway is limited to knowing some of the brain regions and neural populations involved in the process. We do not understand the computations carried out by the neural circuits within and between the cardioregulatory areas of the central, autonomic and intracardiac nervous systems. Using larval zebrafish as a model organism, we are pioneering systems-level studies of the neural circuits that mediate heart-brain communication. In this project, the SURFiN fellow will work with their mentor to develop high throughput assays for optogenetic control of cardiac function in freely moving larval zebrafish.