Raffi completed his doctoral work in the lab of Vanessa Ruta and Rockefeller University studying the role of dopamine in modulating synapse strength in the mushroom body memory center of the fly. His thesis work led to a number of awards, including the Weintraub Graduate Student Award, and the Elkins Memorial Lecture, and being named a Junior Fellow of the Simons Foundation. In the Grueber lab he is studying the connectivity and function of mechanosensory neurons. Raffi is very invested in undergraduate mentoring through the Black Undergraduate Mentorship Program in Biology (BUMP Bio).
Publications (Grueber lab)
Cohn R, Kolba N, Picache JA, Lin N, Saleem A, Grueber WB (2023). A cell-type-specific nitric oxide-cGMP pathway regulates proprioceptor morphology. bioRxiv. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.04.14.536921.