Vanessa Julia Ruta, Ph.D. is an American neuroscientist known for her work on the structure and function of chemosensory circuits underlying innate and learned behaviors in the fly ''

Drosophila melanogaster ''Drosophila melanogaster'' is a species of fly (the taxonomic order Diptera) in the family Drosophilidae. The species is often referred to as the fruit fly or lesser fruit fly, or less commonly the " vinegar fly" or "pomace fly". Starting with ...

.'' She is the Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Associate Professor and Head of the Laboratory of Neurophysiology and Behavior at

The Rockefeller University The Rockefeller University is a private biomedical research and graduate-only university in New York City, New York. It focuses primarily on the biological and medical sciences and provides doctoral and postdoctoral education. It is classified ...

and, as of 2021, an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Ruta is a 2019 MacArthur Fellow. She was one of the six fellows from

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

Education and scientific career

Ruta graduated summa cum laude from

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also admin ...

in Chemistry in 2000. She went on to perform doctoral research in the laboratory of Rod Mackinnon, earning her Ph.D. in Biology from

in 2005. In Mackinnon's lab, she played a critical role in solving the structure of the voltage-dependent potassium ion channel. Her graduate work investigated the structural biology and function of potassium channels. These deeply conserved proteins conduct ions across biological membranes and are targets of toxin including those produced by the tarantula. Vanessa worked out the mechanism by which spider toxins bind the voltage sensor domain of potassium channels. As a postdoctoral fellow with

Richard Axel Richard Axel (born July 2, 1946) is an American molecular biologist and university professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Columbia University and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His work on the olfactory system won ...

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

, Ruta switched fields to the analysis of how the brain encodes both innate and learned stimuli and discovered a sexually dimorphic circuit that drives male fly responses to a pheromone, and traced the activity of the circuit from the periphery to the motor output. She joined the faculty at

in 2011.

Career

In work that bridged her postdoc and the establishment of her own independent group her at

Rockefeller University The Rockefeller University is a private biomedical research and graduate-only university in New York City, New York. It focuses primarily on the biological and medical sciences and provides doctoral and postdoctoral education. It is classif ...

, Ruta demonstrated that the mushroom body encodes information using a rewriteable random access memory architecture. Her lab has elucidated brain circuits that control male fly responses to female pheromones, demonstrated that the memory center of the fly brain uses compartmentalized

dopamine Dopamine (DA, a contraction of 3,4-dihydroxyphenethylamine) is a neuromodulatory molecule that plays several important roles in cells. It is an organic chemical of the catecholamine and phenethylamine families. Dopamine constitutes about 80% o ...

modulation to encode behaviors, described the evolution of central neural circuits underlying courtship decisions in ''Drosophila'' and solved the structure of the invertebrate olfactory receptor co-receptor (Orco). Her work on the structure of insect odorant receptors—a potential target for new insect repellents—has been funded by the

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), a merging of the William H. Gates Foundation and the Gates Learning Foundation, is an American private foundation founded by Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates. Based in Seattle, Washington, it was ...

. Ruta is a member of the selection committee of the Perl-UNC Neuroscience Prize

Awards and honors

For her PhD work, Ruta received the Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award in 2005. She has received a number of junior faculty awards, including the New York Stem Cell Foundation–Robertson Neuroscience Investigator Award (2012), the McKnight Neuroscience Scholar Award (2012), the Pew Biomedical Scholar Award (2012), the Sinsheimer Fund Scholar Award (2012), the Irma T. Hirschl/Monique Weill-Caulier Trust Research Award (2013), and the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in Neuroscience (2013). In 2013, Ruta received the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the lat ...

Director’s New Innovator Award, for a project that aims to connect neural plasticity to learning and memory. She was named a

MacArthur Foundation The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a private foundation that makes grants and impact investments to support non-profit organizations in approximately 50 countries around the world. It has an endowment of $7.0 billion and p ...

Fellow in 2019.

Personal life

Ruta is the daughter of the 20th Century landscape painter Peter Ruta. She spent her early childhood in

and

Santa Fe, New Mexico Santa Fe ( ; , Spanish for 'Holy Faith'; tew, Oghá P'o'oge, Tewa for 'white shell water place'; tiw, Hulp'ó'ona, label= Northern Tiwa; nv, Yootó, Navajo for 'bead + water place') is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. The name “S ...

. Ruta returned to

to live in the

Westbeth Artists Community Westbeth Artists Housing is a nonprofit housing and commercial complex dedicated to providing affordable living and working space for artists and arts organizations in New York City. The complex comprises the full city block bounded by West, Be ...

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

, and she attended

Stuyvesant High School , motto_translation = For knowledge and wisdom , address = 345 Chambers Street , city = New York , state = New York , zipcode = 10282 , country ...

. Between high school and college, Ruta was a professional ballet dancer. She is the sister of journalist

Garance Franke-Ruta Garance Franke-Ruta is the executive editor of GEN by Medium. She has worked as Washington editor of Yahoo News and editor in chief of Yahoo Politics, Voices columnist and politics editor of ''The Atlantic'' Online, national web politics editor ...

. Ruta married graphic designer Rickie Mohan in 2001.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ruta, Vanessa Living people Rockefeller University faculty American neuroscientists MacArthur Fellows American medical researchers American women neuroscientists Rockefeller University alumni Hunter College alumni Stuyvesant High School alumni American women scientists Scientists from New York (state) Year of birth missing (living people)