Dr. Sarah Leinwand is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California Berkeley in the lab of Dr. Kristin Scott. Sarah received her bachelor’s degree in the Biological Basis of Behavior from the University of Pennsylvania and her PhD in Neuroscience from the University of California San Diego. Her graduate studies, in the lab of Dr. Sreekanth Chalasani at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, investigated chemosensory neural circuit organization, plasticity and function in C. elegans. Sarah’s postdoctoral research probes the activity-dependent development of neural circuits for learned behaviors. She aims to characterize hormonal and other molecular mechanisms that sculpt the maturation of spontaneous and evoked neural activity underlying adult learned behaviors in Drosophila. She employs a combination of in vivo functional imaging, genomics, optogenetics, and behavioral approaches to improve our understanding of these fundamental neurodevelopmental processes. Sarah was previously awarded a Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund Postdoctoral Fellowship.