Cecilia Velasco Dominguez

Dr. Cecilia Velasco completed her PhD in 2022 under Prof. Artur Llobet at the University of Barcelona where she studied the neurobiology of the presynaptic terminal using autaptic cultures. She described a mechanism of presynaptic homeostatic plasticity in response to synapse elimination and demonstrated that presynaptic microtubule dynamics contributes to spontaneous synaptic vesicle release.

She later joined the laboratory of Prof. Gero Miesenböck where she is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford (DPAG, Center of Neural Circuits and Behaviour). Her project aims to investigate the changes in synaptic activity that promote sleep in the fruit fly by combining electrophysiology with genetics, optogenetics and transcriptomics. The ultimate goal of her project is to advance our understanding in the molecular mechanisms underlying homeostatic sleep regulation.