Zachary Knight Named Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator
Zachary Knight (left), PhD, talks with graduate student Chris Zimmerman in his Mission Bay lab. Knight was named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. Photo by Noah Berger
When the Knight lab at UC San Francisco isn’t probing the neurobiology of hunger, thirst and thermoregulation, they like to do escape rooms, real-life adventure games that challenge players to break out of a locked room. The simulated scenarios can range from the mundane – an office – to the elaborate – a haunted theater – but the trick to escape is figuring out what is or isn’t a clue, which ones lead to the next puzzle, and which ones lead to dead ends.
It’s easy to see why escape rooms would appeal to Zachary Knight, PhD, who approaches puzzles about physiology with a blend of logic and out-of-the-box thinking. Knight is an assistant professor of physiology and a member of the UCSF Weill Institute of Neurosciences. Since starting his lab at UCSF in 2012, Knight and his team have unlocked a series of surprising discoveries about what motivates us to eat, drink and seek comfortable temperatures.