Together with her Bioelectronics group, Anikeeva develops multifunctional fibers that can deliver electrical, optical, and chemical signals to specified neurons. These flexible probes are also capable of recording neural activity and delivering genes into the brain and spinal cord.
Anikeeva also investigates ways of stimulating neurons wirelessly and with minimal invasiveness, using magnetic fields to activate nanoparticles injected into specific regions of the nervous system.
Anikeeva applies these tools to study brain circuits relevant to motivation, anxiety, social interactions, and to spinal circuits in the context of recovery following injury. The ultimate goal of Anikeeva’s research is to better understand, diagnose, and treat disorders of the nervous system.
A new research direction in the Anikeeva lab focuses on unraveling nervous system pathways between the gut and brain to in order to create improved therapeutic strategies for conditions including Parkinson’s, depression, anxiety and autism spectrum disorders. The lab’s platform of flexible fibers capable of probing and interrogating gut and brain pathways, together with other new physiological and computational approaches, is enabling the team to assess the bidirectional communication between the central nervous system and GI functions, both ex vivo and in vivo. The researchers will use these tools to pursue a mechanistic understanding of circuits, cells, and receptors governing gut-brain communication and develop new approaches that heal the nervous system.
Polina Anikeeva was born in Leningrad, USSR, and grew up in St. Petersburg, Russia. She got her BS in physics from St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University in 2003, and then spent a year as a researcher at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico working on solar cells composed of semiconductor nanocrystals.
She completed her PhD in materials science at MIT in 2009 with her thesis dedicated to physics-driven design of light-emitting devices based on organic materials and quantum dots. Her curiosity in biology led her to a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroscience and bioengineering at Stanford University, where she began creating optoelectronic devices for recording and stimulation of neural activity.
In 2011, Polina returned to MIT as an assistant professor in materials science and engineering and became the associate director of the Research Laboratory of Elecronics. Anikeeva became an associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences and an associate member of the McGovern Institute in 2018. In 2022, she became the director of the newly launched K. Lisa Yang Brain-Body Center at MIT, where she directs research into the neural pathways beyond the brain.
Awards
2021 – NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, National Institutes of Health
2020 – MacVicar Faculty Fellow, MIT
2019 – MITx Prize for Teaching and Learning in MOOCs, MIT
2018 – Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise, Vilcek Foundation
2015 – Junior Bose Teaching Award, School of Engineering, MIT
2015 – Top Innovator Under 35, Technology Review
2014 – Outstanding Faculty Undergraduate Research (UROP) Mentor, MIT
2013 – Mildred Dresselhaus Prize, MIT
2013 – Young Faculty Award, DARPA
2013 – NSF CAREER Award, National Science Foundation