Dr. Amita Sehgal is a distinguished neuroscientist whose pioneering work has fundamentally reshaped our understanding of circadian rhythms and sleep mechanisms at the molecular and cellular levels. She currently serves as the John Herr Musser Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is also Director of the Chronobiology Program, and maintains her appointment as an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Born in Delhi, India, she completed her undergraduate and master's education there before earning her PhD from the Weill Graduate School of Cornell University and conducting postdoctoral research at Rockefeller University. Her distinguished career reflects a consistent dedication to unraveling the genetic basis of biological timekeeping and sleep regulation using innovative model systems.
Dr. Sehgal's groundbreaking research has elucidated the molecular mechanisms underlying circadian clocks through her extensive work with Drosophila melanogaster, where she isolated the timeless clock gene and demonstrated its critical role in the autoregulatory loop central to endogenous timekeeping. Her laboratory developed the now widely adopted Drosophila model for sleep research, which has transformed the field by enabling genetic approaches to investigate sleep regulation and function. These seminal contributions have provided crucial insights into how circadian clocks synchronize to environmental light cues and generate overt rhythms of behavior and physiology. Her work on the homeostatic regulation of sleep has identified key genes and neural circuits that underlie the fundamental biological drive for sleep, creating new avenues for understanding sleep disorders in humans.
Beyond her research achievements, Dr. Sehgal has been instrumental in mentoring generations of scientists and fostering collaborative research across the chronobiology and sleep communities. Her leadership as Director of the Chronobiology Program has established the University of Pennsylvania as a global hub for circadian and sleep research. Ongoing investigations in her laboratory continue to explore the connections between circadian rhythms, sleep, metabolism, and aging, with implications for understanding numerous health conditions. As a member of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Medicine, and American Academy of Arts and Sciences, her enduring influence continues to guide the direction of sleep and circadian biology research worldwide.
