Lora Sweeney

Lora received her undergraduate degree in Biology from Harvard University. At Harvard, she became fascinated by how the brain develops its hallmark molecular, anatomical and circuit complexity.

Motivated by this desire, she joined the laboratory of Dr. Liqun Luo at Stanford University for her graduate studies. In the Luo Lab, she exploited the precise connectivity of the fruit fly olfactory system to decipher new principles of neural circuit wiring during development.

She then embarked on a joint postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratories of Drs. Thomas M. Jessell (Columbia University) and Christopher R. Kintner (Salk Institute of Biological Studies). In her postdoctoral work, she defined how motor circuits are molecularly specialized for different forms of movement.

In July 2020, Lora was appointed an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA). Her group seeks to understand the neural basis and molecular mechanisms that drive the transition from swimming to walking during frog metamorphosis and vertebrate evolution.