Mani Ramaswami is the professor of neurogenetics at Trinity College Dublin. Ramaswami’s laboratory was among the first to combine cell biology and genetics to analyze synaptic mechanisms in Drosophila. His current work is focused on neuronal functions of RNA-granules and RNA-binding proteins in vivo and neural circuit mechanisms involved in behavioral habituation. Based on his laboratory’s studies of olfactory habituation in Drosophila, Ramaswami recently proposed that habituation may be generally mediated by inhibitory representations or negative images of excitatory stimulus ensembles created by a specific form of excitation-inhibition balancing that is altered in autism spectrum disorders.

Ramaswami has an M.S. degree in chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi; a Ph.D. from the Division of Biology at the California Institute of Technology; and was a Human Frontiers Science Program and Life Science Research Fellowship supported postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San Francisco. He has held tenured academic positions in National Centre for Biological Sciences, in Bangalore (a part of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research), and at the University of Arizona. He is a past McKnight Neuroscience Scholar and the recipient of two National Institutes of Health Research Career Development Awards. He is a Science Foundation Ireland Investigator, a reviewing editor for eLife, a member of the Royal Irish Academy, an adjunct professor in the National Centre for Biological Sciences and the University of Arizona, as well as current director of the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience.