Silke Sachse
Research Interest
My research explores the neural mechanisms that enable animals to encode, interpret, and respond to a wide array of odors. Using Drosophila melanogaster as a model system, my lab combines advanced neurogenetic, anatomical, physiological, and behavioral approaches to dissect the underlying neural circuits and uncover their roles in odor coding and processing.
I received my PhD from the Free University of Berlin, where I studied olfactory coding in honeybees in the lab of Giovanni Galizia. As a postdoctoral fellow in Leslie Vosshall’s lab at The Rockefeller University in New York City, I shifted my focus to Drosophila, investigating experience-dependent plasticity in the olfactory system. In 2008, I established an independent research group funded by the BMBF in the department of Bill Hansson at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena and was promoted to tenured research group leader (equivalent to a W2 professorship) in 2016. My lab has since identified fundamental neural mechanisms underlying olfaction and more recently expanded its scope to investigate novel coding strategies in non-model organisms, including multiple Drosophila species and the migratory locust.
Since April 2025, I have been Professor and Chair of Neurobiology and Genetics at the University of Würzburg.
