Prof. Dr. Denis Burdakov

Denis joined ETH in 2017 from The Francis Crick Institute in London. 

He was born in 1979, and grew up in Kyiv, Ukraine, and the UK. He graduated from Oxford (BA 2001, PhD 2004), where he studied medicine, physiology, and biophysics. In addition to working as a Senior Group Leader at the Crick, he previously held tenured faculty appointments at the University of Cambridge (Associate Professor of Pharmacology) and at King's College London (Professor and Chair of Systems Neuroscience); he also held an honorary professorship at UCL and a visiting professorship at UFRGS, Brazil. He has been a recipient of awards and grants from the ERC (Starting Grant), HFSP (Young Investigator Award), SNSF, MRC, BBSCR, HHMI, The Royal Society, and Diabetes UK.  

Denis' research centers on general principles of brain function and malfunction, and their relation to our body. His research lab at ETH (Neurobehavioural Dynamics Lab) works across the areas of systems physiology, psychology, and neuroscience, focussing on neural signals and computations that convert sensory context into appropriate actions, appetites, and arousal. The experiments focus on dynamics and interconnectivity of specific neurons, but the pursued questions are broad, overlapping with fields such as engineering (what control algorithms are best for performance in an uncertain world? what are their strengths and weaknesses?) and medicine (how can we target specific brain signals to treat common diseases?). A key focus is on pan-CNS-projecting "brain orchestrator" circuits radiating from the hypothalamus, and postulated to be tunable by our internal state, including the diets we eat. Such neurons - for example orexin/hypocretin neurons - are increasingly implicated in disorders of energy balance, sleep, motor control, mood, and cognition. 

Selected research acheivements:

Tesmer AL, Li X, Bracey E, Schmandt C, Polania R, Peleg-Raibstein D, Burdakov D (2024) Orexin neurons mediate temptation-resistant voluntary exercise. Nature Neuroscience, 27: 1774-1782

Viskaitis P, Tesmer AL, Liu Z, Karnani MM, Arnold M, Donegan D, Bracey E, Grujic N, Patriarchi T, Peleg-Raibstein D, Burdakov D (2024) Orexin neurons track temporal features of blood glucose in behaving mice. Nature Neuroscience, 27: 1299-1308

Li H-T, Viskaitis P, Bracey E, Peleg-Raibstein D, Burdakov D (2024) Transient targeting of hypothalamic orexin neurons alleviates seizures in a mouse model of epilepsy. Nature Communications, 15: 1249

Grujic N, Tesmer A, Bracey E, Peleg-Raibstein D, Burdakov D (2023) Control and coding of pupil size by hypothalamic orexin neurons, Nature Neuroscience, 26(7):1160-1164.

Li H-T, Donegan D, Peleg-Raibstein D, Burdakov D (2022) Hypothalamic deep brain stimulation as a strategy to manage anxiety disorders. PNAS,119(16): 1-9

Viskaitis P, Arnold M, Garau C, Jensen LT, Fugger L, Burdakov D (2022) Ingested non-essential amino acids recruit brain orexin cells to suppress eating in mice. Current Biology,32: 1-10

Concetti C, Peleg-Raibstein D, Burdakov D (2020) Control of fear extinction by hypothalamic MCH neurons. PNAS, 117(36): 22514-22521

Karnani M, Schöne C, Bracey E, Gonzalez J, Viskaitis P, Li H-T, Adamantidis A, Burdakov D (2020) Role of spontaneous and sensory orexin neuron dynamics in rapid locomotion initiation. Progress in Neurobiology, 187: 101771

Kosse C, Burdakov D (2019) Natural hypothalamic circuit dynamics underlying object memorization. Nature Communications, 10(1): 2505

Blomeley C, Garau C, Burdakov D (2018) Accumbal D2 cells orchestrate innate risk-avoidance according to orexin signals. Nature Neuroscience, 21(1): 29-32

Kosse C, Schöne C, Bracey E, Burdakov D (2017) Orexin-driven GAD65 network of the lateral hypothalamus sets physical activity in mice. PNAS, 114(17): 4525-4530

Gonzalez A, Iordanidou P, Strom M, Adamantidis A, Burdakov D (2016) Awake dynamics and brain-wide inputs of hypothalamic MCH and orexin networks. Nature Communications,7: 11395

Gonzalez A, Jensen L, Iordanidou P, Strom M, Fugger L, Burdakov D (2016) Inhibitory interplay between orexin neurons and eating. Current Biology, 26: 2486-2491

Schöne C, Apergis-Schoute J, Sakurai T, Adamantidis A, Burdakov D (2014) Co-released orexin and glutamate evoked non-redundant spike outputs and computations in histamine neurons. Cell Reports, 7: 697-704

Karnani M, Apergis-Schoute J, Adamantidis A, Jensen L, de Lecea L, Fugger L, Burdakov D (2011) Activation of central orexin/hypocretin neurons by dietary amino acids. Neuron, 74(2): 616-629

Williams RH, Alexopoulos H, Jensen LT, Fugger L, Burdakov D (2008) Adaptive sugar sensors in hypothalamic feeding circuits. PNAS, 105(33): 11975-11980

Gonzalez JA, Jensen LT, Fugger L, Burdakov (2008) Metabolism-independent sugar sensing in central orexin neurons. Diabetes 57(10): 2569-2576

Williams RH, Jensen LT, Vekhratsky A, Fugger L, Burdakov D (2007) Control of hypothalamic orexin neurons by acid and CO2. PNAS, 104(25): 10685-10690

JOINING NEUROBEHAVIOURAL DYNAMICS LAB:

General: Denis Budakov is pleased to consider applicants who 1) understand our research focus, described above in general terms and as specific examples - if you want some lay overviews, read recent ETH press releases (links below*); 2) have excellent writing and coding skills, and curiosity and initiative to independently find and consume scientific information (eg from google scholar or similar databases). Note: ETH PhD or postdoc positions are highly competitive, we typically get >100 applications per place. Due to this high demand, even if applicants meet the above conditions, we can only respond when we have places.

Master projects: We accept students registered as master students at ETH, or sometimes at other Swiss or European universities. You can join the lab for a long (ca 6 months) full-time project. If you are interested, contact Denis Burdakov directly.

PhD projects: You need to have a masters degree, fit scientifically and socially with our lab, and have a PhD stipend equivalent to ETH minimal stipends for doctoral students. The fit, and PhD stipend award, are decided directly by Denis Burdakov (at ETH most PhD stipends come from professors not programs). You can contact him if you are interested. Note: while all PhD projects are within our lab's general research focus described above, we usually do not discuss specific projects at application stage, because in our lab the precise PhD topic is decided in the second year of PhD. In the first year, we train the student in our on-site technologies and analyses**, determine their ability within the latter, collect preliminary data, and based on this (and on latest literature!) identify specific hypotheses to test. Our PhD projects last 3-6 years.

Postdoc projects: Please contact Denis Burdakov if you are interested and satisfy our general conditions (see General above). 

*Press releases: eyes as windows into brain, neural basisof some"irrational" behaviour, tuning behaviour with diet

**Techniques: Optogenetics; chemogenetics; 2-photon and miniscope calcium imaging of neural circuit dynamics; fiber photometry; psychological, physiological and behavioural metrics at high temporal resolution in vivo; data time-series and other relevant analysis and coding in Matlab/Python.