#TraineeTuesday: Lisa Baik, PhD

In this rendition of #TraineeTuesday (X, Bluesky), we highlight Lisa Baik, PhD, a postdoctoral associate in Yale’s Carlson Lab! Lisa's research has recently been highlighted in a first-author paper published in Nature, detailing groundbreaking findings on mosquito behavior. Her work explores critical yet understudied topics: the Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus) and the mosquito taste system. Specifically, Lisa investigates how mosquitoes taste their environment, including human skin, and how taste perception influences their behavior—particularly their decision to bite.

Lisa’s work is especially impactful given the rapid spread of mosquito-borne diseases accelerated by climate change. The Asian tiger mosquito, in particular, has become highly invasive, spreading diseases such as dengue fever, yellow fever, and Chikungunya worldwide. Her research illustrates that mosquitoes possess a sophisticated taste system that plays a crucial role in their decision-making process. While previous studies have primarily focused on mosquitoes’ senses of smell, vision, and heat detection, Lisa’s findings call attention to taste as an essential factor in determining whether mosquitoes choose to bite, opening possibilities to identify mosquito-aversive tastants to deter biting behaviors.

In addition to her notable publication, Lisa recently received the Yale Postdoc Mentoring Award, an achievement made especially more meaningful due to nominations directly from her students.

Lisa’s journey into neuroscience and insect behavior research began far from Yale, in rural South Korea. As a young girl, she spent hours outdoors observing and collecting insects. After immigrating to the U.S., she pursued insect behavior research, fascinated by her childhood adventures in bug collecting.

Initially she studied the circadian rhythms, the internal biological clock regulating daily behavioral and physiological patterns, and phototransduction, the process by which cells in the eye convert light into signals the brain can interpret, of the common fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) during her undergraduate and early PhD studies. Toward the end of her PhD, her interests shifted toward mosquitoes.

Her PhD and postdoc advisors, who primarily studied fruit flies, encouraged her interest in mosquitoes, leading to her work with her mentor at Yale, John Carlson, PhD.

Lisa is heading back to UC Davis, her undergraduate alma mater, where she will start her own lab as an assistant professor this summer. Her future research will focus on the molecular and genetic mechanisms behind mosquito taste, with the hope of identifying ways to disrupt their ability to bite.

She credits the collaborative environment at Yale for much of her growth and gives a special shoutout to Paul Shamble and Joel Greenwood at the Yale Neurotechnology Core for their support.

As she transitions to running her own lab, Lisa is excited to keep mentoring young scientists and tackling big questions about insect behavior.