Welcome CSHL Fly Course Alumni

In 1984, the Drosophila Neurobiology course at CSHL debuted* with Ralph Greenspan, Lily Jan, Yuh Nung Jan, and Patrick O’Farrell at the helm. Three decades later, the short course continues to be offered every summer and has trained over 400 scientists (and counting). This page is dedicated to connecting — and reconnecting — fly course alumni and keeping everyone up-to-date on everyone’s recent accomplishments.

See who else has joined the fly course alumni ranks (aka Honor Roll); and be sure to join the alumni network and check out the course on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

* In the 1970s, CSHL offered several Neurobiology of Drosophila workshops. In 1984, the workshop was fully revamped to capture the incredible changes in the scientific landscape and was the birth of our present day — and longtime running — fly course.

News, Features & Highlights

Alumni who attended the 2019 meeting of Neurobiology of Drosophila met up to take an alumni group photo.
The 2016 course received a special shout out in Cecilia Mezzera’s talk during the 2019 meeting of Neurobiology of Drosophila.
Congrats Rudy Behnia '07 on the 2018 McKnight Scholar Award!
Congrats to course instructor Alex Keene on the NIH research award for his project entitled "Development of Genetic Tools for Functional Analysis of Sleep in Cavefish."

Do you want to share news that can be attributed to the course? Tell us!

Meetings & Conferences

Neurofly 2020 | September 1-4, 2020 | Toledo, Spain
Neuroscience 2020 | October 24-28, 2020 | Washington, DC

Are you attending a conference not listed above? Or know of one that should be on everyone's radar? Tell us and we'll add it.

"Fly" Features

Blog featuring the science and participants of CSHL Meetings & Courses

Visitor of the Week: Roberto Hernandez

Repeat Visitor: Ethan Greenblatt

Visitor of the Week: Doris Ling

A Word From: Heather Broihier & Troy Littleton

Visitor of the Week: Ilse Eidhof

Visitor of the Week: Suguru Takagi

c-dros-17-karlakaun-stefanpulver-alexkeene-chihonlee

A Word From: Karla Kaun, Alex Keene, Chi-Hon Lee & Stefan Pulver

Visitor of the Week: Tayfun Tumkaya

Class of 1987

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Re-live the Course "on the fly"

These videos were captured during the 2018 course. What element(s) of the course has and hasn't changed since your participation?

Drosophila Neurobiology: Genes, Circuits, & Behavior is an annual research course at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. http://meetings.cshl.edu/Dros18 Our course is funded by: - NSF - Helmsley Charitable Trust - HHMI

Our students learned how to conduct live embryo dissections and succeeded in a single afternoon! Drosophila Neurobiology: Genes, Circuits, & Behavior is an annual research course at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Drosophila embryo immunostaining! Yippee! Drosophila Neurobiology: Genes, Circuits, & Behavior is an annual research course at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. http://meetings.cshl.edu/Dros18 Our course is funded by: - NSF - Helmsley Charitable Trust - HHMI

Our students got a crash course on the physiology and development of the Drosophila neuromuscular junction (NMJ). They also recorded from actual NMJ neurons! Drosophila Neurobiology: Genes, Circuits, & Behavior is an annual research course at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Computational modeling in the fly, you say? We say yes! Our students learned a new way to study behavior and physiology in Drosophila. Drosophila Neurobiology: Genes, Circuits, & Behavior is an annual research course at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Our fly course students learned how to conduct patch clamp recordings in fly neurons! Pretty cool stuff. Drosophila Neurobiology: Genes, Circuits, & Behavior is an annual research course at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. http://meetings.cshl.edu/Dros18 Our course is funded by: - NSF - Helmsley Charitable Trust - HHMI

Matthieu Louis (University of California Santa Barbara) introduces our students to behavioral tracking of Drosophila larvae! His lab has created an affordable system to record motor behavior in small models. Drosophila Neurobiology: Genes, Circuits, & Behavior is an annual research course at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

On Day 15 of the course, Amanda Crocker (Middlebury College) visited our course to talk about her research and experience working at a liberal arts institution. Our students also heard from course director Ellie Heckscher (University of Chicago) and scientist Gregg Wildenbergg (University of Chicago/Argonne National Lab) about using an ultrastructural connectomics approach to study neurodevelopment.

Our students learned another exciting new technique: live calcium imaging of Drosophila larval motor neurons! Drosophila Neurobiology: Genes, Circuits, & Behavior is an annual research course at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. http://meetings.cshl.edu/Dros18 Our course is funded by: - NSF - Helmsley Charitable Trust - HHMI

Monica Dus (University of Michigan) and Pavel Masek (Binghamton University) teach our students the basics of studying feeding and learning behaviors in Drosophila! Drosophila Neurobiology: Genes, Circuits, & Behavior is an annual research course at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Seth Tomchik (Scripps Research Institute Florida) and Vivek Jayaraman (Janelia Research Campus) visit our course to teach our students about live neural imaging and mapping or neural circuits in the fly! Drosophila Neurobiology: Genes, Circuits, & Behavior is an annual research course at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Matthew Kayser (University of Pennsylvania) and Alex Keene (Florida Atlantic University) introduced our students to the science of sleep in Drosophila (and as a bonus: blind cavefish)! Drosophila Neurobiology: Genes, Circuits, & Behavior is an annual research course at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.