ECR Spotlight is a series of interviews with early-career authors from a selection of papers published in Journal of Experimental Biology and aims to promote not only the diversity of early-career researchers (ECRs) working in experimental biology but also the huge variety of animals and physiological systems that are essential for the ‘comparative’ approach. Haneal Pae is an author on ‘ Drosophila require both green and UV wavelengths for sun orientation but lack a time-compensated sun compass’, published in JEB. Haneal is a PhD student in the lab of Ysabel Giraldo at University of California, Riverside, USA, investigating how sensory information is integrated and processed in the nervous system and influences Drosophila orientation during flight.