The scientific journey of Dr. Volkan started in Turkey where she was born and completed her Undergraduate and Masters in Molecular Biology and Genetics. Interestingly, she initially had a strong interest in film but decided to go down the science route and into academia–an ambition she had since high school. This decision brought her to research neural development in the retina and what the genetic mechanisms were in that developmental process. She quickly learned that mammalian research was not for her, so, when Drosophila research gained traction in the 1990s, Dr. Volkan jumped at the opportunity.
To further develop her career, Volkan knew she had to leave Turkey and ended up down the street at UNC-Chapel Hill to study fly genetics and development for her Ph.D. Her initial work in Bob Duronio’s Lab used Drosophila as a way to understand how cell cycles in the body are regulated through development. This gave her the background she needed in working with flies and learning fly genetics. At this point in her career, Volkan was still figuring out what she wanted to do for her postdoc. She found cell cycles to be fascinating, but it was too crowded and full of opposing ideas. This ultimately brought her back to Neuroscience and across the country to Los Angeles.
“It [Neuroscience] has always been very interesting for me–from understanding how the brain is organized, how it orchestrates all our behaviors and thoughts, sensations, feelings, and I still wanted to stay in fruit flies, so I decided to do a postdoc in Howard-Hughes lab at UCLA.”
The next layer she wanted to unfold, using her background in developmental biology and genetics, was genetic programs that build nervous systems and connected cells and neurons in different ways to form neural circuits. Two questions that guided this research were 1. How do you wire these circuits correctly? 2. How is the architecture of the circuitry regulated during development? Little did she know that right when she started to get involved in this area, the fly olfactory system would get deciphered and the organization of the system would be already discovered. However, during the genetic screening, she stumbled onto a specific mutation and was influenced by a book she was reading about the life of Seymour Benzer (Time, Love, and Memory) to focus on how to quantify behaviors within the systems of neural circuits which ultimately led her back to North Carolina and to Duke.
“What we found [at the start of the Volkan lab] was a sensor of environment that regulates the expression of these critical modulatory genes–what I have been waiting for all this time.”
Dr. Pelin Volkan
Today in the Volkan Lab, Dr. Volkan continues to study developmental neurobiology and is also researching how sensory cues depicted by the peripheral nervous systems regulate behaviors such as courtship and feeding to change the expression of certain genes. Outside the lab, you can find Dr. Volkan enjoying music, art, nature, martial arts, film, cooking, and most importantly, spending time with her family. She describes cooking as her zen moment and enjoys continuous motions such as chopping vegetables. Her love for academia and art is shown in her office with diagrams and images all over the wall of Drosophila, but the closest image to her desk is one of her family.
From Turkey to UNC-Chapel Hill to UCLA and back to Duke University, Dr. Pelin Volkan has a robust scientific career full of many stories. Sitting down with her for even 30 minutes–this is apparent. Another thing that is apparent is her love for science and exploring something new; this desire has led her to where she is today and continues to motivate her as she continues her personal research and expands her work in the Volkan Lab. I am grateful and excited to learn more from Dr. Volkan this summer.
