Vivek Venkatachalam is an assistant professor of physics at Northeastern University. His group studies invertebrate neuronal activity through development using modern approaches to whole-brain calcium imaging, optogenetics, and quantitative behavior.

Before starting his lab at Northeastern, Vivek was a postdoctoral scholar in Aravi Samuel’s lab at Harvard, where he helped build tools for whole-brain calcium imaging in C. elegans. His PhD with Amir Yacoby focused on sensitive measurements of charge and heat in two-dimensional electron systems.