Principal Investigator
Prof. Ananya Rao
FASc, FNA
Professor of Neuroscience
Centre for Neuroscience, Deccan Institute of Science
Swarnajayanti Fellow
Director, Brain Circuits Programme
Ananya leads the lab. She records her own sleep, for science.
Ananya Rao is Professor of Neuroscience at the Deccan Institute of Science, where she leads a group of twenty researchers studying learning and memory.
Her group discovered how hippocampal neurons replay new experiences during sleep, and built a head-mounted microscope now used in labs on four continents. Before starting her lab she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cambridge, and she received her PhD from the Indian Institute of Science.
Professional & Research Experience
- 2022 – present
Professor of Neuroscience, Deccan Institute of Science
- 2015 – 2022
Associate Professor, Deccan Institute of Science
- 2012 – 2015
Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Cambridge
Education
- 2012
PhD in Neuroscience, Indian Institute of Science
Thesis: Synaptic plasticity in hippocampal circuits
- 2007
MSc in Biophysics, University of Hyderabad
Awards & Honours
- 2026
Swarnajayanti Fellowship, National Research Foundation
- 2024
Fellow, Academy of Sciences
- 2018
Young Scientist Medal, National Science Academy
Service & Leadership
- 2023 – present
Reviewing Editor, Journal of Neural Circuits
- 2024 – present
Director, Brain Circuits Programme, Deccan Institute of Science
Invited Talks
- 2026
How sleep sorts our memories, Gordon Research Conference on Learning and Memory
- 2025
Imaging 10,000 neurons, Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting