Women in Research #LINO75: Odilia lu

Odilia from the US is a PhD candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.

She is actively working on two projects: She is leading a multi-institutional consortium to determine the robust and replicable effects of psilocybin on mouse behavior, and she is investigating how the brain transitions between routine and conflict modes of decision-making in mice using a multi-region dynamical systems framework.

Odilia participated in the 75^th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting (#LINO75 – Interdisciplinary).

Enjoy the interview with Odilia and get inspired:

What inspired you to pursue a career in science / in your discipline?

My path into science has felt like a scientific experiment itself, full of trial and error, observation, and iteration until I found something I really enjoyed.

Growing up, I thought I wanted to be a doctor. In pursuit of this goal, I began volunteering in a hospital during my first week of college. At the start of each shift, I was excited to interact with patients and immerse myself in the environment. Yet by the end of each shift, I consistently felt drained. I paid attention to these feelings.

Later that year, I joined my first summer research internship. Unexpectedly, I loved it. I became completely absorbed in designing experiments and answering questions that no one yet knew the answer to. I would become so focused that I would forget basic needs like eating or drinking. At one point, I even chose to stay in the lab through a hurricane so I could continue my experiments.

That experience made something very clear to me: research was not just interesting; it was energizing. Through trial and error, I found that science is the kind of work that naturally drives my curiosity, persistence, and excitement every day.

Who are your role models?

I like to find inspiration from the people I interact with in my everyday life. My mother inspires me with her tenacity and attention to detail – qualities that I strive to bring to my own experimental work. My father inspires my curiosity and desire to learn; growing up, many of our road trips somehow turned into educational lessons. (Anybody remember Brain Quest?) He taught me that not knowing something is simply an invitation to learn more. I also look up to my supervisor from my first research job. She was my first close example of a successful woman in science, and an exceptional mentor who showed me that kindness in leadership earns respect rather than diminishing it. She has played a key role in shaping my understanding of what it means to be a good scientific mentor.

How did you get to where you are in your career path?

As a scientist, I would characterize myself as meticulous, innovative, and creative. My path to becoming the scientist I am today has been strongly shaped by the mentors who trained me and the environments that encouraged both rigor and curiosity.

During my undergraduate studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, I worked in Professor Alcino Silva’s lab for three years. My direct mentor, Dr. Manuel López Aranda, trained me to approach neuroscience with an extreme level of precision and attention to detail – skills that are essential in mouse behavioral research. I still remember my first day working with him on behavior. He said, “Follow me. Do exactly what I do.” As we were putting on gloves, he jokingly pointed out that he put on his right glove first while I put on my left glove first. While humorous, it reflected an important lesson: in behavioral neuroscience, even the smallest details can matter.

I later began my PhD studies at the University of California, Berkeley, in Professor Stephan Lammel’s lab. One of the things I appreciate most about his mentorship is the flexibility and encouragement to pursue ambitious and creative scientific questions. He has consistently pushed me to think beyond standard approaches and to explore what new technologies can make possible. With that support, I have been able to develop a novel behavioral task designed to study flexible decision-making in mice and combine it with emerging approaches that allow us to examine neural activity at a more brain-wide level.

Together, these experiences have shaped how I approach science today – with rigor, curiosity, creativity, and a willingness to adopt new tools to answer difficult questions.

What is the coolest project you have worked on and why?

One of the coolest projects I have worked on during my PhD was leading a multi-institutional collaboration in which five laboratories performed the same experiments to identify the robust and replicable effects of the psychedelic drug psilocybin on mouse behavior. I found the project exciting both scientifically and methodologically.

Scientifically, I have long been interested in psychiatric disorders such as depression and anxiety, so studying the behavioral effects of a historically understudied and often taboo compound in this context was super cool! Because so much remains unknown about psychedelics, every result – positive, negative, or null – felt meaningful and informative.

What made the project especially unique, however, was its emphasis on reproducibility. Coordinating multiple labs to perform identical experiments required an unusual level of procedural precision and communication. In many ways, it reminded me of a Science Olympiad competition I participated in during high school, where I had to describe how to reconstruct a complex object so precisely that my teammate could replicate it exactly without seeing the original version. We are taught from an early age the importance of methodological clarity and detail in science, and it was a great experience to apply this in my own science and experience first-hand its essentiality to reproducibility.

What’s a time you felt immense pride in yourself / your work?

One of the moments I felt the most pride in my work was when I successfully completed a technically ambitious experiment for my project investigating how the brain adapts when routine decisions become conflicting. My first experiment required several years of preparatory work, including designing a novel behavioral task and developing surgical and recording procedures using emerging technologies in freely behaving mice that had not previously been established at my institution.

Because of the project’s scope and technical complexity, it was often met with skepticism. Colleagues would describe it as “ambitious,” sometimes with clear doubt about whether it was feasible. There was a long period where I was investing years of effort into building the foundation for experiments without yet knowing whether it would ultimately succeed.

The moment when all those pieces finally came together – when I was able to generate rich neural recordings during complex behavior – was incredibly rewarding. More than anything, I felt proud that persistence, troubleshooting, and belief in the project had ultimately paid off.

What is a “day in the life” of you like?

I wake up around 7 AM and have a simple breakfast – usually an egg and bread. Recently, I’ve started baking my own sourdough, which has become a small but meaningful way to start the day on a positive note. I arrive at the lab around 8:30 AM. From there, my workday can vary quite a bit. Some days are spent almost entirely on my feet running experiments, while others are focused on data analysis. Most days are a combination of both. I also spend a significant amount of time on Slack coordinating a multi-lab consortium. I usually leave the lab sometime between 5 and 7 PM and settle into a fairly routine evening. I exercise – rotating between running, swimming, yoga, and strength training – and cook, usually Chinese dishes. A few times a week, I also like having friends over for dinner. By around 10 PM, I start winding down with a cup of tea, a TV show, and whatever crochet project I am currently working on. I’m usually asleep by midnight, although if I need help falling asleep, attempting the New York Times crossword usually does the trick.

What are you seeking to accomplish in your career?

Neuropsychiatric disorders are among the leading contributors to global disease burden, yet their underlying neural mechanisms remain incompletely understood. My long-term goal is to help bridge this gap by identifying the circuit and systems-level processes that give rise to disorders such as depression and anxiety, and by translating these insights into more effective and precise interventions.

Achieving this will require progress on multiple fronts, from developing more valid and ethologically relevant behavioral assays in animal models to strengthening communication and collaboration between preclinical and clinical researchers. Ultimately, I am motivated by the scale of the unmet need in this area and by the opportunity to contribute to a more mechanistic understanding that can meaningfully improve treatment strategies.

What do you like to do when you’re not doing research?

Outside of research, I enjoy staying active through running, biking, and swimming. I recently did my first triathlon! I also love to cook delicious foods, make sourdough bread, and crochet clothing items and plants – which make great gifts. For me, community and building relationships are a priority, so I often try to incorporate friends into the activities I do.

What advice do you have for other women interested in science / in your discipline?

There are often implicit assumptions about traits that people, and particularly women, “should” suppress in order to succeed in science. I recently heard from a friend in physics that their advisor suggested they be “less nice,” which reflects a broader and still persistent stereotype about what a successful scientist should look like or how they should behave.

My advice to other women in science is to resist the idea that you need to fundamentally change yourself in order to belong. Take up space confidently, and do not feel pressured to shrink aspects of your personality, communication style, or identity in ways that diminish your effectiveness or authenticity.

I would also add that learning to advocate for yourself early – whether in asking for credit, opportunities, or support – and intentionally seeking out mentors who actively invest in your growth can make a substantial difference in navigating a scientific career.

In your opinion, what will be the next great breakthrough in science / in your discipline?

In my view, the next major breakthroughs in neuroscience will likely come from advances in both methods and data analysis that can be applied to projects studying widely different topics.

On the methods side, a key frontier is scalable, whole-brain measurement of neural activity with high spatial and temporal resolution. Current approaches each have important limitations. For example, fMRI provides broad coverage but limited resolution, while technologies like Neuropixels offer high-resolution recordings but are still constrained in brain-wide coverage. A transformative step forward would be technologies that bridge these scales and enable more complete recordings of distributed brain activity.

Equally important is how we handle the resulting data. As datasets become increasingly large and complex, advances in computational approaches – particularly machine learning and AI – will be essential for extracting structure and mechanistic insight from neural recordings.

What should be done to increase the number of female scientists and professors?

The number of female scientists and professors in neuroscience is steadily increasing, which helps create a positive feedback loop for further recruitment. As more young students see visible and diverse examples of women succeeding in STEM, it becomes easier for them to imagine these paths for themselves.

While this feedback loop exists to increase representation, inclusion isn’t just about numbers; it’s also about how freely people can show up as themselves and have a sense of belonging. This evolves much more slowly than representation itself, and reducing inequities in belonging requires changing both culture and structure. At the cultural level, we need broader definitions of what a scientist looks like and values, so that different communication styles and identities are not penalized. We need open dialogue about the microaggressions that can make women feel patronized. At the structural level, we need to better train and reward effective mentorship, and ensure that policies such as parental leave are not only available in principle, but also genuinely usable without career penalty.

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