Dr. Zirong Gu is a postdoctoral research scientist at Columbia University. Under the mentorship of Drs. Rui Costa and Hyungbae Kwon, Dr. Gu will provide a mechanistic, circuit-level understanding of action-specific basal ganglia subcircuits. Specifically, he will test the hypothesis that the activities of action-specific striatal ensembles are channeled through unique sets of output neurons that project to different target areas; therefore, modulating specific behaviors. To accomplish this aim, Dr. Gu will utilize objective, unsupervised behavioral clustering, cell-type-specific Calcium-light tagging, and closed-loop optogenetic manipulation. This work may help to identify novel therapeutic targets for a wide range of psychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases, including ADHD and Parkinson’s Disease. Dr. Gu received his PhD from the University of Cincinnati.