Ravi Nath

Ravi Nath is investigating mechanisms that promote resilience to neurodegenerative diseases. As a postdoctoral scholar in Anne Brunet’s lab, Ravi is pioneering an emerging short-lived vertebrate model system—the African turquoise killifish—to investigate the role of sleep in aging and neurodegenerative diseases. Ravi built a longitudinal tracking system to explore how sleep changes across lifespan and in the context of neurodegenerative disease. In parallel, he has used CRISPR/Cas9 genome engineering to generate animals with altered neuronal signaling and is testing the impact of these changes on brain resilience. In addition to this work, Ravi has pioneered a new CRISPR-mediated knockin method to develop killifish models of human neurodegenerative diseases. Ravi earned his PhD at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in the laboratory of Paul Sternberg, where he was trained in genetics and neuroscience. Ravi’s PhD focused on the basic biology of sleep. He investigated the evolutionary origin of sleep and discovered that jellyfish sleep. He also dissected the mechanism by which neuropeptides regulate sleep. While working toward his PhD, Ravi was awarded the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award from the National Institutes of Health. Now, Ravi is leveraging his expertise in genetics, neuroscience, sleep, and new model systems to answer important questions about the role of sleep in aging and disease.