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Murugan Lab

Meet The Team

Malavika (Malu) Murugan

Principal Investigator

Assistant Professor

Malu received her Ph.D. in Neurobiology from Dr. Rich Mooney's lab at Duke University. She subsequently completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Dr. Ilana Witten's lab at Princeton University.

Selected Awards:

2025 - Alfred Sloan Research Fellowship

2017 - Allison J. Doupe Fellowship, McKnight Foundation.

2016-2019 - Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain Postdoctoral Fellowship, Simons Foundation.

2010-2011 - Broad Research Award, Ruth Broad Foundation.

Jennifer Isaac

M.D./Ph.D Student

Jenni received her B.S. in Neuroscience for Davidson College in Charlotte, NC. She then worked as a research assistant in the Glickfeld Lab at Duke University. After three years of medical school, she started her Neuroscience PhD. In lab, she is interested in investigating the anatomical and functional changes in lateral septal connectivity in neurodegenerative mouse models. Outside of lab, Jenni enjoys running marathons, playing soccer and strolling on the Beltline.

Jarildy Javier

Ph.D Student

Jarildy received her B.A. in Biology with a concentration in Ecology and Evolution from Colby College, Waterville, ME. After spending some time in science eduction abroad, she became a NIH PREP scholar at Northwestern University. Her thesis work is focused on using calcium imaging to understanding the neural substrates underlying pair bonding behavior in the prairie vole. She is co-mentored with Dr. Larry Young. When she's not in lab, Jarildy likes trying out restaurants, drinking bubble tea, and singing loudly during drives with friends.

Benjamin Dykstra

Ph.D Student

Ben is a graduate student in the lab, and claims to be an autodidact. He is working towards studying the neural substrates of social recognition in mice using cellular resolution calcium imaging. Ben is additionally co-mentored by Dr. Gordon Berman. Ben enjoys biking, hiking, reading, and watching Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), the synopsis of which follows: In 1805, aboard the H.M.S. Surprise, the brash Captain Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe) and his trusted friend, the ship's scholarly surgeon, Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany), are ordered to hunt down and capture a powerful French vessel off the South American coast. Though Napoleon is winning the war and the men and their crew face an onslaught of obstacles, including their own internal battles, "Lucky Jack" is determined that nothing will stop the Surprise from completing its mission.

Hyma Balasubramanian

Ph.D Student

Hyma is a graduate student in the lab, hailing from India. She is the recipient of the George W Woodruff Fellowship, and the Simon-Emory Fellowship in Computational Neuroscience through the neuroscience graduate program of Emory. She has an undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering, and a master's in Computational Neuroscience from the Bernstein Centre of Computational Neuroscience, Berlin, Germany. In the lab, she is working towards identifying the extent of shared and distinct representations of social and non-social reward processing present in the reward circuitry and the computations that underlie communication between such representations. Outside the lab, Hyma enjoys cooking and hosting events for her friends and family.

Sonia Karkare

Ph.D Student

Sonia is a graduate student in the lab. She has a bachelors in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology from Emory College. In the lab, she is working with graduate students to understand the effects of oxytocin on social behavior. During her downtime, Sonia likes to watch Netflix with her cats.