The building of a visual system requires the formation of the eyes, of the specialized brain nuclei that receive and process the information gathered by the eyes, and of their proper connections. In our lab we investigate the mechanisms controlling these processes during the development of the fruitfly, Drosophila –a little “giant” among the model organisms used to speed up research in the area of visual systems development. We use a range of techniques: from genetics and genomics to imaging and mathematical modeling. Through this research we aim at finding general principles used in the building of visual systems and in their evolution, principles that could be of use in human biomedicine and in engineering.

Group Website: