Arghya Mukherjee

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Arghya Mukherjee, PhD

Neuroscientist

Dr. Mukherjee investigates how neural circuits mature across adolescence to support complex cognition and their disruption in neurodevelopmental disorders. His work also focuses on harnessing cell-type-specific circuits for novel therapeutics.

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Bio

Dr. Arghya Mukherjee is a systems neuroscientist whose research focuses on the functional maturation of neural circuits during adolescence and their disruption in neurodevelopmental disorders. His scientific journey began as a University Grants Commission of India-funded research fellow at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Pune, India. Here, Dr. Mukherjee investigated how neuropeptides modulate olfactory sensitivity to align feeding behavior with internal energy states, using zebrafish as a model system.

Pursuing his PhD at the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Switzerland under Professor Pico Caroni, Dr. Mukherjee explored the neural circuit mechanisms across the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus that support rule learning and memory consolidation. His work identified a sensitive period in early adulthood for long-lasting restoration of prefrontal inhibitory drive and associated rule learning deficits in a genetic mouse model of schizophrenia.

Following his PhD, Dr. Mukherjee moved to the United States for postdoctoral research at MIT and later at Tufts University. There, he uncovered cell-type-specific frontothalamic circuits that support decision-making under uncertainty and established tree shrews—a phylogenetic intermediate between primates and rodents—as a model for dissecting cognitive control circuits. Dr. Mukherjee's postdoctoral work was funded by a Y. Eva Tan Postdoctoral fellowship and a K99/R00 Pathway to Independence award.

In 2025, Dr. Mukherjee joined the Center for Brain Research in Development, Genetics, and Engineering (BRIDGE) at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania as an assistant professor. His research is supported by funding from the National Institute of Mental Health, the BRIDGE Center, and CHOP.

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