Neeraj Lal is a Schmidt AI in Science fellow at UC San Diego and Scripps Research. Neeraj works at the interface of circuit neuroscience, metabolism, and data science to understand how organisms make decisions about energetically demanding physiological processes to balance energy consumption and energy expenditure. Neeraj obtained his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Structural Biology from UC Davis in Dinesh-Kumar lab, where he discovered molecular mechanisms that plants use to reorient their resources towards immunity during infection by suppressing growth and homeostasis pathways. For his postdoc Neeraj pivoted to circuit neuroscience and animal physiology to study relationship between energy expenditure and energy consumption in mouse model in Li Ye's lab at the Scripps Research Institute. There, he explored neural basis of why mammals eat more in the cold. Neeraj pioneered a unique cold-induced hunger paradigm to study the relationship between enhanced energy expenditure in the cold and increased feeding. Using behavior analysis, mathematical modeling and unbiased whole brain screening he identified a novel brain region, Xi, that acts as a switch to initiate foraging behavior during cold induced hunger state.