Marla B. Sokolowski

Marla B. Sokolowski is a Professor of Biology at the University of Toronto at Mississauga (UTM) and a Canada Research Chair of Genetics and Behavioural Neurology. She obtained both her B.Sc. (1977) and Ph.D. (1981) from the University of Toronto. In 1982, she became Assistant Professor and NSERC University Research Fellow at York University where she remained as a Professor until 1999 when she was recruited by the University of Toronto at Mississauga (UTM).

Dr. Sokolowski has received Distinguished Visiting Professorships in the US, Europe and Japan where she contributes regularly to graduate education. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and has received numerous other awards and honours including UTM’s Research Excellence Award and the William F. Grant and Peter B. Moens Award of Excellence, the Genetics Society of Canada’s highest honour.

Dr. Sokolowski studies the genetic, molecular, neurobiological and environmental underpinnings of behavioural variation in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Her work on fruit flies has focused on a foraging gene that affects the way in which these insects search for food. She has identified a single protein that plays a key role in the actions of this gene and this may in turn be related to how humans make decisions about what, when and where to eat. Having isolated the foraging gene in both fruit flies and humans, she is using this gene to screen samples of DNA from people with eating disorders in order to gain a deeper understanding of how genetic factors influence human afflictions. Dr. Sokolowski’s research on genes involved in food intake and energy output has important and broad implications for energy homeostasis in mammals, including humans, holding promise for future understanding and treatment of food related disorders such as obesity. Marla is the Weston Fellow of CIFAR.