Efe Balkanli

Pronouns: He/Him

Current Research Project: My research interests mainly focus on how genetic expressions can
be altered through social experience, using the brain to track and analyze such alterations. My
lab currently focuses multiple research questions- the one I'm most interested on being "How
does social experience and pheromone circuit activity modulate gene expression in the nervous
system?". I worked on a project investigating the effects of social experience on gene
regulation, using Drosophila melanogaster as model. Currently, I'm working on a project that is
analyzing how social experience modulate sleep, where we are using dopaminergic neurons as
a tool to assess such changes in sleep caused by social experience.

How he got involved with research: I cold emailed about 5-10 labs of my interest area during
the summer before my freshman year (epigenetics/neuroscience) and 2 labs replied back to
me. I interviewed for one and got in! (Volkan Lab). Since I was work-study eligible, I got on JobX
to find research assistant positions. I spent time to check the departments of interest, looked
over most labs of my interest, and looked through their published papers and research
question, and made a list of labs to cold email after applying through JobX. This was how I got
involved in research at Duke, in which later on I asked the PI if I could be put on a project of
interest along with my bench mentor's confirmation to start contributing for their project.