Personal Profile

Dr. Julie Semmelhack received her Bachelor’s degree from Princeton University, and obtained her Doctoral degree from UCSD, working on olfactory circuits in Drosophila under the guidance of Jing Wang. She completed postdoctoral training with Dr. Herwig Baier at the Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology in Germany. There, she focused on developing methods to record large areas of the brain in behaving zebrafish larvae, revealing the brain areas involved in goal-directed and defensive visual behaviors. She moved to Hong Kong University of Science and Technology as an Assistant Professor, and built on her postdoctoral research to identify the pathways for prey and predator visual stimuli, and the neural basis for binocular vision. She moved to Sun Yat-Sen as Associate Professor in 2026. Her research findings have been published as corresponding or first author in journals such as Nature, PNAS, and Current Biology. 

Future directions of the lab at Sun Yat-sen University include 1. Exploring how astrocytes interact with neurons to modulate behavior 2. How the visual system identifies prey vs. predators, and 3. How neurons integrate internal states to generate flexible behaviors. The laboratory is recruiting Postdoctoral Fellows, Doctoral students, and Master’s students. For further details, see https://semmelhacklab.com/. 

Academic Achievements:

Representative publications: 

1. Yan, G.; Tian, G.; Fu, Y.; He, Y.; She, Z.; Chen, K. K. Y.; Semmelhack, J. L.#; Qu, J. Y.# Active Pixel Power Control for Crosstalk-Free All-Optical Neural Interrogation. Nat Commun 2026, 17 (1), 3195. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-69419-8
2. Zhao, P.; Tong, Y.; Lazarte, I. P.; Khan, B.; Tian, G.; Chen, K. K. Y.; Lam, T. K. C.; Hu, Y.#; Semmelhack, J. L.# The Visuomotor Transformations Underlying Target-Directed Behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2025, 122 (13), e2416215122. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2416215122
3. Tian, G.; Lam, T. K. C.; Yan, G.; He, Y.; Khan, B.; Qu, J. Y.#; Semmelhack, J. L.# Binocular Integration of Prey Stimuli in the Zebrafish Visual System. Current Biology 2025, 35 (13), 3228-3240.e5. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2025.05.063
4. Khan, B.; Lazarte, I. P.; Jaesiri, O.; Zhao, P.; Semmelhack, J. L.# Protocol for Using UV Stimuli to Evoke Prey Capture Strikes in Head-Fixed Zebrafish Larvae. STAR Protocols 2024, 5 (1), 102780. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xpro.2023.102780
5. Khan, B.; Jaesiri, O.; Lazarte, I. P.; Li, Y.; Tian, G.; Zhao, P.; Zhao, Y.; Ho, V. D.; Semmelhack, J. L.# Zebrafish Larvae Use Stimulus Intensity and Contrast to Estimate Distance to Prey. Current Biology 2023. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2023.06.046
6. Temizer, I.; Donovan, J. C.; Baier, H.; Semmelhack, J. L. A Visual Pathway for Looming-Evoked Escape in Larval Zebrafish. Current biology : CB 2015, 25 (14), 1823–1834. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.06.002
7. Semmelhack, J. L.; Donovan, J. C.; Thiele, T. R.; Kuehn, E.; Laurell, E.; Baier, H. A Dedicated Visual Pathway for Prey Detection in Larval Zebrafish. eLife 2014, 3, e04878. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.04878
8. Semmelhack, J. L.; Wang, J. W. Select Drosophila Glomeruli Mediate Innate Olfactory Attraction and Aversion. Nature 2009, 459 (7244), 218–223. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature07983
9. Root, C. M.*; Semmelhack, J. L.*; Wong, A. M.; Flores, J.; Wang, J. W. Propagation of Olfactory Information in Drosophila. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2007, 104 (28), 11826–11831. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0704523104