Dr. Suraj Honnuraiah is a postdoctoral scientist in the laboratory of Prof. Greg Stuart at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. He grew up in India and did his Masters in Neuroinformatics with Prof. Rodney Douglas at the ETH in Zurich, Switzerland.

A tragic accident in childhood led to his friend losing his vision at an early age. Suraj talks about how he used this incident as his motivation to study and work in vision neuroscience and neuroinformatics for his PhD. He also talks to us about some subtle and covert forms of discrimination that he has faced and emphasizes the importance of having a diverse and inclusive working environment.

Currently, he is studying the cellular and circuit mechanisms of binocular visual information processing in rodent visual cortex using optogenetics and electrophysiological techniques.

Links:

• Honnuraiah’s ANU page
• Honnuraiah’s Loop profile
• Honnuraiah’s work on ResearchGate

Audio-transcription of the episode

Interviewed and edited by Shruti Muralidhar, Audio content editing by Abhishek Chari, Music from Lee Rosevere. Other projects by Shruti Muralidhar: @polybiotique, BiasWatchIndia, IndSciComm.