The Esther A. & Joseph Klingenstein Fund has awarded Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience (MPFI) Research Group Leader Dr. Salil Bidaye a Klingenstein fellowship award in neuroscience of $450,000 over three years. This grant will support Dr. Bidaye’s research into postural instability, a hallmark of many neurological disorders that decreases quality of life and increases the risk of falls and injury.
The Klingenstein Fellowship is awarded to early-career scientists who have made significant research contributions and demonstrate strong potential for a successful research career. This fellowship aims to support innovative basic or clinical research focused on understanding the mechanisms behind neurological and behavioral disorders.
“It is an honor to be named a Klingenstein fellow, and I am thrilled to be joining such an exceptional community of former and current fellows. This support will help advance my research into the complex circuitry that allows many of us to move seemingly effortlessly through the world,” said Bidaye. “When mobility is affected through disease or injury, it often significantly degrades quality of life. Understanding how basic functions, such as postural stability, are achieved through neural circuitry is critical for us to address motor symptoms in disease or injury.”
Dr. Bidaye established his research group in 2021 to investigate the neural control of locomotion at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience. Dr. Bidaye earned his Ph.D. at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP), Vienna in Dr. Barry Dickson’s laboratory and completed his Postdoctoral training at the University of California Berkeley in the lab of Professor Kristin Scott. Over the course of his doctoral and postdoctoral work, Dr. Bidaye established the neural circuit mechanisms underlying the initiation of walking, turning, and backing up in the Drosophila melanogaster, or fruit fly, using it as a model system to interrogate circuit mechanisms at a scale currently impossible in mammalian models.
Most recently, he has discovered key neurons in the fly that, when activated, produce complete stability by increasing resistance in the muscles. However, the dynamic engagement of these neurons during movement and how they use information about body position to achieve postural stability is not yet known. Through the support of the Esther A. & Joseph Klingenstein Fund, Dr. Bidaye will investigate the mechanisms that enable dynamic regulation of postural stability. His findings will dramatically accelerate motor control research across other model systems, as well as inform the design of brain-computer interface prosthetics to assist in the dynamic control of stability.
To learn more about Dr. Bidaye’s work, visit https://www.mpfi.org/bidaye-lab/
About Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience
The Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience (MPFI) is a not-for-profit research organization and part of the world-renowned Max Planck Society, Germany’s most successful research organization with over 84 institutes worldwide. Since its establishment in 1948, 31 Nobel laureates have emerged from the ranks of its scientists. MPFI provides exceptional neuroscientists with the resources and technology to answer fundamental questions of brain development and function. MPFI researchers employ a curiosity-driven approach to science to develop new technologies that make groundbreaking scientific discoveries possible. For more information, visit https://www.mpfi.org/.