Ajay Sriram Mathuru

• Associate Professor, Department of Physiology, National University of Singapore
• Head of Studies, Life Sciences Major, Yale-NUS College
• Institute of Digital Medicine (WisDM) Translational Research Programme, NUS
• Healthy Longevity Translational Research Program, NUS
• Joint Principal Investigator, IMCB, A*STAR

• Neurogenetics
• Behavioural Neuroscience.
• The fundamental question that drives research in my laboratory is understanding how brains operate to generate behavior.
• We develop new tools to study and analyze natural behaviors motivated by rewards and risks – such as social behaviors, predator avoidance, and behaviors triggered by appetitive, aversive, or olfactory cues. We then apply their findings to understand the neurogenetics of human disorders of the brain.

Ajay Mathuru currently serves as the Head of Studies, of Life Sciences at Yale-NUS College and is an Associate Professor (Neuroscience) at the National University of Singapore. He received a Bachelor’s degree in Science (Genetics, Microbiology, and Chemistry) from Osmania University in 1996. He was awarded the University Gold Medal and a Master’s degree in Life Sciences (Plant Sciences) at the University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, India, in 1998.

He spent a summer studying olfactory conditioning and odour-evoked behaviors in the late Professor Obaid Siddiqi’s laboratory at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India which culminated in a lifelong interest in neuroscience. For his Ph.D. work he studied biophysical and biochemical coupling at the hippocampal synapses with Upi Bhalla at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, India.

Prior to starting his group in 2015 at Yale-NUS College, he was an Early Career Research Awardee at IMCB, A*STAR, and worked with Suresh Jesuthasan at Temasek Lifesciences Labs, and Duke-NUS/A*STAR before that.

An overarching theme in the investigations conducted in my lab is to examine how rewards and risks motivate behavior and the extent to which individual behavior is influenced by genetics. In doing so my research addresses a fundamental question in neurogenetics – how does genetic variation impact the normal function of the nervous system? We then explore if our findings explain neurological disorders and molecular mechanisms of neural dysfunction in human diseases. Current studies examine genes implicated in addiction, anxiety disorders, depression, epilepsy, and neurodegeneration in humans.

Having trained as an educator at a small Liberal Arts College, my teaching profile is quite diverse. This includes scientific literacy and inquiry courses for non-specialist undergraduates (1000 level) to advanced topics in neuroscience (4000 level). A brief selection of topics and course titles I have taught in the last 5 years are:

* Advanced topics, Molecular Neuroscience – Genes, Brains, and Behaviour YSC4229
* Foundations of Neuroscience YSC2231 (August semesters)
* Science of Life  YSC2256
* Scientific Inquiry with a focus on Human Evolution YCC1131
* Ideas to Proof-of-Concept EG3301R (In College of Design and Engineering)
* Neuronal Development and Diseases LSM3216 (In YLL School of Medicine)

If you are an educator and would like to access more material from our course, please write to me.