Dr. Tian is a Scientific Director at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience. The Tian Laboratory for Optical Neurophysiology engineers biosensors and optical probes for monitoring and controlling brain activity in living, behaving research animals. Dr. Tian and her team have created a novel class of genetically encoded indicators to sense neuromodulators, enabling the precise measurement of spatiotemporal dynamics of neuromodulator release. These tools, when combined with behavioral and circuit manipulations, can reveal the brain mechanisms underlying the control of various behaviors in health and disease and serve as drug discovery platforms for the identification of novel therapeutic targets.