Molecular and Integrative Physiology (MIP) Department

Assistant Professor, Department of Biological Sciences.

Jimmy Dooley, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences at Purdue University, where he studies how sleep shapes the development of the brain's sensorimotor circuits. His research is rooted in a curiosity about the biological origins of behavior. That curiosity began as an undergraduate with an honors thesis on seasonal rhythms of reproductive behavior in Brian Prendergast's lab at the University of Chicago. He earned his PhD in Neuroscience at the University of California, Davis. Working with Leah Krubitzer, he explored the evolutionary origins of somatosensory and motor cortex through comparative studies of marsupials. He then completed postdoctoral training with Mark Blumberg at the University of Iowa, where his focus shifted toward the role of self-generated movements—particularly REM sleep twitches—and their capacity to actively drive the development of sensorimotor circuits, a finding that forms the foundation of his independent research.