Rate My Professor Paul Szyszka

Associate Professor Paul Szyszka is a faculty member in the Department of Zoology, Division of Sciences, at the University of Otago. He serves as Deputy Director of the Neuroscience programme with responsibility for postgraduate matters and acts as the Zoology Statistics Coordinator. Szyszka holds the qualifications Dipl. Biol. and Dr. rer. nat. Prior to his current position, he was affiliated with the Department of Neurobiology at the University of Konstanz. His teaching portfolio includes BIOL112 Animal Biology, ZOOL223 Animal Physiology, ZOOL314 Neurobiology, and ZOOL412 Neurobiology and Behaviour.

Szyszka's research specializations center on the neural bases of olfactory search in insects, including active smelling strategies, olfactory spatial learning, and social effects on olfactory learning. His academic interests explore perceptual limits in insect olfaction and associated coding patterns. Key publications include 'Sparsening and temporal sharpening of olfactory representations in the honeybee mushroom bodies' (Journal of Neurophysiology, 2005), 'High-speed odor transduction and pulse tracking by insect olfactory receptor neurons' (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2014), 'Associative and non-associative plasticity in Kenyon cells of the honeybee mushroom body' (Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, 2008), 'The speed of smell: odor-object segregation within milliseconds' (PLoS ONE, 2012), 'Olfactory receptor neurons are sensitive to stimulus onset asynchrony: Implications for odour source discrimination' (Chemical Senses, 2024), and 'Knockdown of NeuroD2 leads to seizure-like behaviour, brain neuronal hyperactivity and a leaky blood-brain barrier in a Xenopus laevis tadpole model of DEE75' (Genetics, 2024). These works contribute to understanding olfactory processing and neural mechanisms in insects.