FMI: Congratulations to our fellowship winners

April 6, 2021 We are pleased to announce the latest FMI winners of prestigious research fellowships, including EMBO, Maria Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) and Boehringer Ingelheim Funds (BIF). These grants, targeted at postdocs (and students for BIF), are highly competitive and known worldwide for promoting innovative and interdisciplinary research. 2021 fellowships: Maria Sol Fustinana Gueler ( Synapsis Foundation, Career Development Award ) did her PhD at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina and joined the group of Andreas Lüthi as a postdoc in 2013. Sol is fascinated by how brain networks generate stability and flexibility to shape the adaptive behavioral output of the animal, and by the corresponding dysfunctions in brain disorders. During her postdoc she used deep-brain calcium imaging technique in mice engaged in social or spatial exploration, revealing that these state-dependent behaviors are encoded by distinct neuronal ensembles of the amygdala. Understanding how the brain switches between behavioral states might provide important insight on what goes awry in psychiatric disorders and identify potential strategies to alleviate dysfunctional behaviors. The award from the Synapsis Foundation will enable Sol to establish her own independent research direction, addressing the interplay between circuit and molecular mechanisms in memory plasticity in the healthy and diseased brain.