Salil Bidaye Receives McKnight Scholar Award
MPFI research Group Leader, Salil Bidaye, is one of 10 neuroscientists to receive the prestigious McKnight Scholar Award. This career honor provides funding for Bidaye’s fundamental research on the neural control of walking. McKnight Scholar Awards are given to exceptional scientists who are in the early stages of establishing an independent research career and who have demonstrated exceptional commitment and promise to have an impact on the study of the brain.
“It is truly an honor to be named among this talented group of recipients,” says Bidaye. “This support will help advance my research career in understanding the neural control of movement, including how walking patterns are generated and modulated by context and sensory signals.”
Dr. Bidaye’s research focuses on the neural control of locomotion. Over the course of his doctoral and postdoctoral work, he identified central neurons that initiated walking, turning, halting and backing up in Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly), using the fly as a model system to interrogate circuit mechanisms at a scale currently impossible in mammalian models.
Most recently, he has discovered key neurons in the fly that, when activated, generate rhythmic patterns in the fly’s legs, the basis for walking. By combining the cutting-edge genetic tools and complete neuronal wiring diagram available for the fly with high-speed videography, neural recordings, and computational modeling, the team plans to uncover the contributions and interactions of central and peripheral neural circuits that control coordinated walking.
“Revealing these circuit mechanisms has been a long-sought-after question over many decades. We finally have the tools to record and manipulate neural activity, the computational power, the ability to track movement in high resolution, and now the support to answer this question,” describes Dr. Bidaye.
Dr. Bidaye established his research group at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience in 2021. He earned his Ph.D. at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna, working in Dr. Barry Dickson’s laboratory, and completed postdoctoral training at the University of California, Berkeley, in the lab of Professor Kristin Scott. Learn more about Dr. Bidaye and his work.
About the McKnight Scholar Awards
The Scholar Awards have been given annually since 1977. They were the McKnight Foundation’s earliest means of supporting neuroscience research. The intent of the program is to foster the commitment by exceptional scientists who will have an important impact on the study of the brain and who are in the early stages of establishing an independent laboratory and research career. The program seeks to support scientists committed to mentoring neuroscientists from underrepresented groups at all levels of training. Applicants for the McKnight Scholar Award must demonstrate their ability to solve significant problems in neuroscience, which may include the translation of basic research to clinical practice. They should demonstrate a commitment to an equitable and inclusive lab environment.
About Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience
The Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience (MPFI) is a not-for-profit research organization and part of the world-renowned Max Planck Society, Germany’s most successful research organization with over 84 institutes worldwide. Since its establishment in 1948, 31 Nobel laureates have emerged from the ranks of its scientists. MPFI provides exceptional neuroscientists with the resources and technology to answer fundamental questions of brain development and function. MPFI researchers employ a curiosity-driven approach to science to develop new technologies that make groundbreaking scientific discoveries possible.