Farewell to Noorya

Becky Parkinson

Noorya Ahmed is one of the longest lasting members of the Dehorter lab, commencing with us in 2017 for an undergraduate course. 14th of February 2025 marked her last 'official' day, but of course, in typical Noorya fashion, she will likely stay in touch and impart her advice and assistance until retirement.

1st day of Honours

1st day of PhD

Last day of PhD

To give you a better glimpse into Noorya as a person, we like to think of her in two time zones: AM and PM. AM Noorya was the powerhouse: she helped run the lab, won awards, and would never tire. PM Noorya was the chaotic genius: would stay absurdly late, have banter with everyone, eat whole avocados and lemons at her desk, all while cackling loud enough to echo down the hall.

Noorya worked on countless projects and collaborations, ran and participated in several outreach events and extracurriculars, followed Nathalie from Canberra to Brisbane, and provided endless supervision and mentorship to the whole lab. She also contributed an outstanding publication output. All of which you can check out below:

Mahmoudi, Negar, Yi Wang, Niamh Moriarty, Noorya Y. Ahmed, Nathalie Dehorter, Leszek Lisowski, Alan R. Harvey, Clare L. Parish, Richard J. Williams, and David R. Nisbet. "Neuronal replenishment via hydrogel-rationed delivery of reprogramming factors." ACS nano 18, no. 4 (2024): 3597-3613. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.3c11337

Al Abed, Alice Shaam, Tiarne Vickie Allen, Noorya Yasmin Ahmed, Azza Sellami, Yovina Sontani, Elise Caitlin Rawlinson, Aline Marighetto, Aline Desmedt, and Nathalie Dehorter. "Parvalbumin interneuron activity in autism underlies susceptibility to PTSD-like memory formation." Iscience 27, no. 5 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2024.109747

Ahmed, Noorya Yasmin. "Circuit Formation in the Striatum in Health and Disease." PhD diss., The Australian National University (Australia), 2023.

Ahmed, Noorya Yasmin, Rhys Knowles, Lixinyu Liu, Yiming Yan, Xiaohan Li, Ulrike Schumann, Yumeng Wang et al. "Developmental deficits of MGE-derived interneurons in the Cntnap2 knockout mouse model of autism spectrum disorder." Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology 11 (2023): 1112062. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcell.2023.1112062

Ahmed, Noorya Yasmin, Yadollah Ranjbar-Slamloo, Alice Shaam Al Abed, Lingxiao Gao, Yovina Sontani, Alexandre RCom-H'cheo-Gauthier, Ehsan Arabzadeh, and Nathalie Dehorter. "Er81 transcription factor fine-tunes striatal cholinergic interneuron activity and drives habit formation." Journal of Neuroscience 41, no. 20 (2021): 4392-4409. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0967-20.2021

Ahmed, Noorya Yasmin, Rhys Knowles, and Nathalie Dehorter. "New insights into cholinergic neuron diversity." Frontiers in molecular neuroscience 12 (2019): 204. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnmol.2019.00204

While we will miss her terribly, we are so excited to see her take on London Kings College as a postdoctoral fellow in the Rico lab.