First person – Anabel Byars

ABSTRACT First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Biology Open, helping researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Anabel Byars is first author on ‘ Unpredictable disturbance and its effects on activity behavior and lifespan in Drosophila melanogaster’, published in BiO. Anabel conducted the research described in this article while an undergraduate research assistant in Dr Nicole Riddle's lab at the Department of Biology, The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), USA. She is now an incoming PhD student in graduate biomedical sciences (neuroscience theme) at UAB and will start her PhD program in July 2025, at which point she will complete several lab rotations before choosing a new lab and PI in the Department of Neurobiology at the same institution. Anabel has a range of research interests, including Alzheimer's disease, addiction, memory, nonpathological aging, and neuroplasticity.