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Save the Date for the 2026 BISCCITs Workshop! June 22-24, 2026, Wageningen, NL
Sweta Agrawal, PhD
Sweta Agrawal, PhD
Dr. Sweta Agrawal is currently an Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA but will soon be moving to University of British Columbia (UBC) in January 2026. Her lab studies proprioception - the most important and yet possibly most undervalued and understudied sense according to Sweta. Proprioception is the sense of your body’s position and movement in space. This sense is integral to movement, resulting in severe disability when proprioception is impaired, and better understanding this sense will lead not only to increased understanding of motor control but also improvements in robotics and prosthetics. Despite its importance, Sweta often finds herself having to define proprioception even to neuroscientists. She remarks this is possibly due to many programs only having a single lecture on proprioception, the sense happening unconsciously, or simply the field not knowing more about the sense. In the lab, Sweta sees herself as someone who is able to put together many perspectives. She has always been in labs that have both engineers and biologists, bringing an even more interdisciplinary perspective to the work - similar to BISCCITs! In fact, she attributes her appreciation for how biomechanics, ecology, and evolutionary history shape nervous system function to her experience attending joint journal clubs in graduate school with the labs of Drs. Michael Dickinson, Jeffrey Riffell, and Tom Daniel. Her lab acknowledges the interactions between these components and capitalizes on the depth of the Drosophila community and advances in tools for neural circuit manipulation and connectomics to sit at the crux of it all. In a recent Nature Communications publication (Lee et al, 2025), Sweta’s lab wielded the power of connectomics to identify a unique population of vibration sensing neurons in the Drosophila leg. Sweta details that connectomics helps to ground everything in an anatomical reality while also suggesting ideas that would otherwise be challenging to probe. Sweta believes we are at a time now that we have really good tools to make significant progress on understanding proprioception.
Outside of research, Sweta is also very passionate about science outreach, mentorship, and teaching. At Columbia University during undergraduate, Sweta started a program teaching neuroscience to students at middle schools in Harlem. She enjoyed talking about science to kids in the public - seeing where their minds are at and recruiting future scientists. Nowadays, Sweta is involved in a range of outreach efforts from little kids to retirement homes. In addition to the joys of outreach, she also feels a sense of duty as a scientist to engage the public. Many research labs are funded by the public through federal grants, so she believes it is important to share that research with the community, foster good will, and allow people to see first-hand what good research looks like. Sweta remarked on the contrast between the number of outreach events in Seattle, Wa (where she did her graduate and post-graduate work) and rural Virginia where her lab is currently. She feels an increased responsibility to bring science outreach to these communities with less access to science programs. One event that her lab participates in is the Hokie Bug Fest, where families come to have their kids learn about bugs! She uses this event to illustrate how insect models are a useful way to understand neuroscience and can help us learn more about humans. Sweta particularly enjoys when she can get the parents engaged at these events as well. In addition to the positive impact these events have on the community, Sweta also really values how outreach enhances her own science communication skills.
Looking to the future, the Agrawal lab is moving to UBC in January 2026. The lab will continue studying the role of proprioception in motor control primarily using Drosophila melanogaster, but have begun some exciting work with mosquitos as well. The lab is also starting to venture into more biomechanics. Sweta is actively recruiting at all levels, including master students, PhD students, post-docs, and technicians, so please reach out to Sweta (sweta.agrawal@ubc.ca) if you are interested in joining the lab! Before moving to UBC, Sweta hopes to get as much data as she can while enjoying the east coast fall colors.
When friends or family visit
Blackburg, Va:
Sweta enjoys taking them to breweries on farms in the mountains for a chill, easy, and beautiful evening.
Wayne Kuo
Wayne Kuo
Wayne Kuo is a behavioral technician in the Agrawal lab investigating Drosophila landing coordination utilizing techniques such as genetic screens and optogenetics. For the project, he developed and constructed a novel behavioral paradigm enabling him to capture videos of leg movement during landing transition. He additionally developed custom data analysis pipelines utilizing machine learning softwares DeepLabCut and Anipose for the project. Wayne found the process of physically building the assays meditative, and he unexpectedly enjoyed the hand-crafting aspect of the project. Employing optogenetics in the project has also been an exciting component for him - being able to manipulate neuronal activity with light, activating and deactivating circuitry and analyzing the resultant behavioral changes. Overall, he really values the balance between computation and sensory motor control in the Agrawal lab. His time in the lab has given him a solid foundation in academic research and allowed him to be independent in experimental design and planning future experiments. In his next steps, he hopes to take what he has learned in the Agrawal lab and transition into more computational work, with a particular interest in brain computer interfaces (BCI). Currently, in addition to working in the Agrawal lab, he is a volunteer research assistant for the Vijiyan lab performing sleep studies in humans and getting experience with BCI and EEG. He is actively applying to graduate programs this cycle looking to focus on EEG-based BCI human research, neuro-rehabilitation, neuromodulation, and/or visual processing. Before heading off to graduate school, he hopes to take a restful break and possibly do some traveling.
Outside of research, Wayne also enjoys engaging in outreach such as participating in the Hokie Bug Festival with the Agrawal lab. This festival is open to the public with attendance primarily from elementary and middle school students. At the festival, he showcased the moonwalker fly - a fly that walks backwards in response to red light optogenetic stimulation. He finds outreach fun and engaging as well as great for practicing science communication skills. In his free time, Wayne also enjoys games such as Mahjong and Go, as well as swimming and bike riding.
published 2025-12-15
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