People

Ronny Rosner, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Neuroscience
Principal Investigator — Neuroethology and Cognition Lab

Ronny studies how compact nervous systems extract complex visual information from the world. His research focuses on stereoscopic vision, motion detection, and active sensing in insects.
He obtained his PhD from Bielefeld University (Germany), where he investigated variability in visual processing in flies. Following postdoctoral work at the University of Marburg (Germany), studying the central complex and visual pathways in locusts, he joined Newcastle University (United Kingdom) to explore 3D vision in mantises, culminating in the first identification of neurons tuned to binocular disparity in an invertebrate. At the University of Mainz (Germany), Ronny worked on binocular vision in fruit flies.
Since 2025, he has led the Rosner Lab at the Institute of Neuroscience at Bilkent University, where his team combines behavioural studies, electrophysiology and neuroanatomical approaches to uncover general principles of visual computation in small brains.

At Bilkent University, Ronny teaches the courses Visual Neuroscience (NSC 539 / PSYC 539) and Research Methods in Neuroscience (NSC 512).

Email: ronny.rosner@bilkent.edu.tr

Beyazıd Bestami Acar, B.Sc.

MSc Student

Beyazıd graduated from the Biology Department at Middle East Technical University in 2025 and is currently a MSc student in the Neuroscience program at Bilkent University.  

His research mainly focuses on depth perception in praying mantises through behavioural experiments, aiming to understand how these insects perceive 3D space. He is also broadly interested in cognition and in comparative and evolutionary neuroscience.

Email: bestami.acar@bilkent.edu.tr 

İrem Manoğlu

BSc Student

İrem Manoğlu is a senior Biology student at Middle East Technical University. During her internship at the University of Würzburg in Germany, she studied how different neuron groups interact in the Drosophila brain, focusing on how internal states influence neural activity and behaviour. This experience strengthened her interest in sensorimotor control, how neurons coordinate sensory input and motor output to generate movement. She hopes to continue studying neurophysiology using model organisms to gain a better understanding of how small nervous systems link perception and action.

Email: irem.manoglu@metu.edu.tr