Affiliation: University of California, Los Angeles

Celine Riera, PhD is an assistant professor in the Center for Neural Science and Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and adjunct faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles. She obtained her PhD at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland and performed her postdoctoral training with Dr. Andrew Dillin at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and University of California, Berkeley. Her research focus is on understanding the function of specific neurons of chemosensory nature in metabolic diseases. Dr. Riera's work has pioneered the exploration of sensory neuron function in metabolism, demonstrating that sensory receptors expressed in afferent nociceptor neurons originating from the dorsal root ganglia can influence the rate of metabolism during aging. Additionally, her studies evidenced that olfactory neurons drive changes in energy balance in mouse models of diet-induced obesity. Research in the lab is focused on the identification of central and peripheral sensory neural circuits regulating metabolic balance upon nutritional overload and the aging process, and identifying key molecules and genes mediating these processes.