Saskia de Vries

Saskia de Vries is an Associate Investigator at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, where she has worked since 2012. After earning her B.S. in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University and Ph.D. in Neurobiology from Harvard University, she completed postdoctoral research at Stanford University studying visual processing in fruit flies. Her groundbreaking work identified loom-sensitive neurons in the fly's optic lobe and their connection to escape behavior. At the Allen Institute, she leads research on visual processing and neural coding, combining physiological, computational, behavioral, and molecular approaches. Her significant contributions include leading large-scale surveys of mouse visual cortex function and developing standardized methods for sharing neurophysiology data. Her work has been highly influential, with over 2,000 citations, particularly her research on functional organization of mouse visual cortex and neural activity recording methods.