Institute News: Announcements

School of Science announces 2022 Infinite Expansion Awards

by MIT School of Science |

The MIT School of Science has announced eight postdocs and research scientists as recipients of the 2022 Infinite Expansion Award.

The award, formerly known as the Infinite Kilometer Award, was created in 2012 to highlight extraordinary members of the MIT science community. The awardees are nominated not only for their research, but for going above and beyond in mentoring junior colleagues, participating in educational programs, and contributing to their departments, labs, and research centers, the school, and the Institute.

The 2022 School of Science Infinite Expansion winners are:

  • Héctor de Jesús-Cortés, a postdoc in the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, nominated by professor and Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS) head Michale Fee, professor and McGovern Institute for Brain Research Director Robert Desimone, professor and Picower Institute Director Li-Huei Tsai, professor and associate BCS head Laura Schulz, associate professor and associate BCS head Joshua McDermott, and professor and BCS Postdoc Officer Mark Bear for his “awe-inspiring commitment of time and energy to research, outreach, education, mentorship, and community;”
  • Harold Erbin, a postdoc in the Laboratory for Nuclear Science’s Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions (IAIFI), nominated by professor and IAIFI Director Jesse Thaler, associate professor and IAIFI Deputy Director Mike Williams, and associate professor and IAIFI Early Career and Equity Committee Chair Tracy Slatyer for “provid[ing] exemplary service on the IAIFI Early Career and Equity Committee” and being “actively involved in many other IAIFI community building efforts;”
  • Megan Hill, a postdoc in the Department of Chemistry, nominated by Professor Jeremiah Johnson for being an “outstanding scientist” who has “also made exceptional contributions to our community through her mentorship activities and participation in Women in Chemistry;”
  • Kevin Kuns, a postdoc in the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, nominated by Associate Professor Matthew Evans for “consistently go[ing] beyond expectations;”
  • Xingcheng Lin, a postdoc in the Department of Chemistry, nominated by Associate Professor Bin Zhang for being “very talented, extremely hardworking, and genuinely enthusiastic about science;”
  • Alexandra Pike, a postdoc in the Department of Biology, nominated by Professor Stephen Bell for “not only excel[ing] in the laboratory” but also being “an exemplary citizen in the biology department, contributing to teaching, community, and to improving diversity, equity, and inclusion in the department;”
  • Nora Shipp, a postdoc with the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, nominated by Assistant Professor Lina Necib for being “independent, efficient, with great leadership qualities” with “impeccable” research; and
  • Jakob Voigts, a research scientist in the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, nominated by Associate Professor Mark Harnett and his laboratory for “contribut[ing] to the growth and development of the lab and its members in numerous and irreplaceable ways.”

Winners are honored with a monetary award and will be celebrated with family, friends, and nominators at a later date, along with recipients of the Infinite Mile Award.

Five MIT faculty elected 2021 AAAS Fellows

by MIT News Office |

Five MIT faculty members have been elected as fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

The 2021 class of AAAS Fellows includes 564 scientists, engineers, and innovators spanning 24 scientific disciplines who are being recognized for their scientifically and socially distinguished achievements.

Mircea Dincă is the W. M. Keck Professor of Energy in the Department of Chemistry. His group’s research focuses on addressing challenges related to the storage and consumption of energy, and global environmental concerns. Central to these efforts are the synthesis of novel organic-inorganic hybrid materials and the manipulation of their electrochemical and photophysical properties, with a current emphasis on porous materials and extended one-dimensional van der Waals materials.

Guoping Feng is the James W. and Patricia T. Poitras Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, associate director of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, director of Model Systems and Neurobiology at the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, and an institute member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. His research is devoted to understanding the development and function of synapses in the brain and how synaptic dysfunction may contribute to neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders. By understanding the molecular, cellular, and circuitry mechanisms of these disorders, Feng hopes his work will eventually lead to the development of new and effective treatments for the millions of people suffering from these devastating diseases.

David Shoemaker is a senior research scientist with the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. His work is focused on gravitational-wave observation and includes developing technologies for the detectors (LIGO, LISA), developing proposals for new instruments (Cosmic Explorer), managing the teams to build them and the consortia which exploit the data (LIGO Scientific Collaboration, LISA Consortium), and supporting the overall growth of the field (Gravitational-Wave International Committee).

Ian Hunter is the Hatsopoulos Professor of Mechanical Engineering and runs the Bioinstrumentation Lab at MIT. His main areas of research are instrumentation, microrobotics, medical devices, and biomimetic materials. Over the years he and his students have developed many instruments and devices including: confocal laser microscopes, scanning tunneling electron microscopes, miniature mass spectrometers, new forms of Raman spectroscopy, needle-free drug delivery technologies, nano- and micro-robots, microsurgical robots, robotic endoscopes, high-performance Lorentz force motors, and microarray technologies for massively parallel chemical and biological assays.

Evelyn N. Wang is the Ford Professor of Engineering and head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Her research program combines fundamental studies of micro/nanoscale heat and mass transport processes with the development of novel engineered structures to create innovative solutions in thermal management, energy, and water harvesting systems. Her work in thermophotovoltaics was named to Technology Review’s lists of Biggest Clean Energy Advances, in 2016, and Ten Breakthrough Technologies, in 2017, and to the Department of Energy Frontiers Research Center’s Ten of Ten awards. Her work extracting water from air has won her the title of 2017 Foreign Policy’s Global ReThinker and the 2018 Eighth Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water.

National Academy of Sciences honors cognitive neuroscientist Nancy Kanwisher

by Julie Pryor |

MIT neuroscientist and McGovern Investigator Nancy Kanwisher. Photo: Jussi Puikkonen/KNAW

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has announced today that Nancy Kanwisher, the Walter A. Rosenblith Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, has received the 2022 NAS Award in the Neurosciences for her “pioneering research into the functional organization of the human brain.” The $25,000 prize, established by the Fidia Research Foundation, is presented every three years to recognize “extraordinary contributions to the neuroscience fields.”

“I am deeply honored to receive this award from the NAS,” says Kanwisher, who is also an investigator in MIT’s McGovern Institute and a member of the Center for Brains, Minds and Machines. “It has been a profound privilege, and a total blast, to watch the human brain in action as these data began to reveal an initial picture of the organization of the human mind. But the biggest joy has been the opportunity to work with the incredible group of talented young scientists who actually did the work that this award recognizes.”

A window into the mind

Kanwisher is best known for her landmark insights into how humans recognize and process faces. Psychology had long-suggested that recognizing a face might be distinct from general object recognition. But Kanwisher galvanized the field in 1997 with her seminal discovery that the human brain contains a small region specialized to respond only to faces. The region, which Kanwisher termed the fusiform face area (FFA), became activated when subjects viewed images of faces in an MRI scanner, but not when they looked at scrambled faces or control stimuli.

Since her 1997 discovery (now the most highly cited manuscript in its area), Kanwisher and her students have applied similar methods to find brain specializations for the recognition of scenes, the mental states of others, language, and music. Taken together, her research provides a compelling glimpse into the architecture of the brain, and, ultimately, what makes us human.

“Nancy’s work over the past two decades has argued that many aspects of human cognition are supported by specialized neural circuitry, a conclusion that stands in contrast to our subjective sense of a singular mental experience,” says McGovern Institute Director Robert Desimone. “She has made profound contributions to the psychological and cognitive sciences and I am delighted that the National Academy of Sciences has recognized her outstanding achievements.”

One-in-a-million mentor

Beyond the lab, Kanwisher has a reputation as a tireless communicator and mentor who is actively engaged in the policy implications of brain research. The statistics speak for themselves: her 2014 TED talk, “A Neural portrait of the human mind” has been viewed over a million times online and her introductory MIT OCW course on the human brain has generated more than nine million views on YouTube.

Nancy Kanwisher works with researchers from her lab in MIT’s Martinos Imaging Center. Photo: Kris Brewer

Kanwisher also has an exceptional track record in training women scientists who have gone on to successful independent research careers, in many cases becoming prominent figures in their own right.

“Nancy is the one-in-a-million mentor, who is always skeptical of your ideas and your arguments, but immensely confident of your worth,” says Rebecca Saxe, John W. Jarve (1978) Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, investigator at the McGovern Institute, and associate dean of MIT’s School of Science. Saxe was a graduate student in Kanwisher’s lab where she earned her PhD in cognitive neuroscience in 2003. “She has such authentic curiosity,” Saxe adds. “It’s infectious and sustaining. Working with Nancy was a constant reminder of why I wanted to be a scientist.”

The NAS will present Kanwisher with the award during its annual meeting on May 1, 2022 in Washington, DC. The event will be webcast live. Kanwisher plans to direct her prize funds to the non-profit organization Malengo, established by a former student and which provides quality undergraduate education to individuals who would otherwise not be able to afford it.

MIT response to Wall Street Journal opinion essay

by Robert Desimone, McGovern Institute | Nergis Mavalvala, MIT School of Science | Maria T. Zuber, MIT Office of the Vice President for Research |

Following is an open statement in response to “Is MIT’s Research Helping the Chinese Military?”, an opinion essay by Michelle Bethel posted by the Wall Street Journal on Dec. 10, 2021. This statement is jointly from Prof. Robert Desimone, director of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, Prof. Nergis Mavalvala, dean of MIT’s School of Science, and Prof. Maria T. Zuber, vice president for research at MIT.  

Ms. Bethel is absolutely right that research relationships with institutions in China require the most serious care and consideration. MIT brings a thorough and rigorous approach to these matters.

First let us be clear about the work of the MIT McGovern Institute for Brain Research. Of the dozens of research projects currently under way at the McGovern Institute, there is one active research collaboration with China. It involves better identifying and ultimately developing treatments for severe forms of autism or neurological disorders that often render individuals unable to speak and frequently require lifelong care. That project was thoroughly vetted and approved by the U.S. National Institutes of Health in 2019. MIT receives no funding from China for this research, and all findings will be published in peer-reviewed journals, meaning that they are open to medical researchers anywhere in the world. This is the collaboration with the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology that Ms. Bethel referenced in vague terms.

This does not eliminate general concerns about how research may be conducted or used, however. That’s why MIT has strong processes for evaluating and managing the risks of research involving countries, including China, whose behavior affects U.S. national and economic security. Every proposed engagement that involves an organization or funding source from China, once it has been evaluated for compliance with U.S. law and regulation, is further reviewed by committees of senior administrators to consider risks related to national security, economic competitiveness, and civil and human rights. Projects have been variously turned down, modified, or approved under this process.

Ms. Bethel raises important points with respect to U.S.-China relations – but not with respect to the work of the McGovern Institute. We regret that Ms. Bethel felt it necessary to step away from the McGovern, but we respect her views and continue in conversation with her. We note that two other members of the McGovern family, including the McGovern Institute’s co-founder and another daughter, continue to proudly serve on the McGovern board. We are grateful to all three family members.

MIT Future Founders Initiative announces prize competition to promote female entrepreneurs in biotech

Anne Trafton |

In a fitting sequel to its entrepreneurship “boot camp” educational lecture series last fall, the MIT Future Founders Initiative has announced the MIT Future Founders Prize Competition, supported by Northpond Ventures, and named the MIT faculty cohort that will participate in this year’s competition. The Future Founders Initiative was established in 2020 to promote female entrepreneurship in biotech.

Despite increasing representation at MIT, female science and engineering faculty found biotech startups at a disproportionately low rate compared with their male colleagues, according to research led by the initiative’s founders, MIT Professor Sangeeta Bhatia, MIT Professor and President Emerita Susan Hockfield, and MIT Amgen Professor of Biology Emerita Nancy Hopkins. In addition to highlighting systemic gender imbalances in the biotech pipeline, the initiative’s founders emphasize that the dearth of female biotech entrepreneurs represents lost opportunities for society as a whole — a bottleneck in the proliferation of publicly accessible medical and technological innovation.

“A very common myth is that representation of women in the pipeline is getting better with time … We can now look at the data … and simply say, ‘that’s not true’,” said Bhatia, who is the John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, in an interview for the March/April 2021 MIT Faculty Newsletter. “We need new solutions. This isn’t just about waiting and being optimistic.”

Inspired by generous funding from Northpond Labs, the research and development-focused affiliate of Northpond Ventures, and by the success of other MIT prize incentive competitions such as the Climate Tech and Energy Prize, the Future Founders Initiative Prize Competition will be structured as a learning cohort in which participants will be supported in commercializing their existing inventions with instruction in market assessments, fundraising, and business capitalization, as well as other programming. The program, which is being run as a partnership between the MIT School of Engineering and the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, provides hands-on opportunities to learn from industry leaders about their experiences, ranging from licensing technology to creating early startup companies. Bhatia and Kit Hickey, an entrepreneur-in-residence at the Martin Trust Center and senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, are co-directors of the program.

“The competition is an extraordinary effort to increase the number of female faculty who translate their research and ideas into real-world applications through entrepreneurship,” says Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of the MIT School of Engineering and Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “Our hope is that this likewise serves as an opportunity for participants to gain exposure and experience to the many ways in which they could achieve commercial impact through their research.”

At the end of the program, the cohort members will pitch their ideas to a selection committee composed of MIT faculty, biotech founders, and venture capitalists. The grand prize winner will receive $250,000 in discretionary funds, and two runners-up will receive $100,000. The winners will be announced at a showcase event, at which the entire cohort will present their work. All participants will also receive a $10,000 stipend for participating in the competition.

“The biggest payoff is not identifying the winner of the competition,” says Bhatia. “Really, what we are doing is creating a cohort … and then, at the end, we want to create a lot of visibility for these women and make them ‘top of mind’ in the community.”

The Selection Committee members for the MIT Future Founders Prize Competition are:

  • Bill Aulet, professor of the practice in the MIT Sloan School of Management and managing director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship
  • Sangeeta Bhatia, the John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT; a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science; and founder of Hepregen, Glympse Bio, and Satellite Bio
  • Kit Hickey, senior lecturer in the MIT Sloan School of Management and entrepreneur-in-residence at the Martin Trust Center
  • Susan Hockfield, MIT president emerita and professor of neuroscience
  • Andrea Jackson, director at Northpond Ventures
  • Harvey Lodish, professor of biology and biomedical engineering at MIT and founder of Genzyme, Millennium, and Rubius
  • Fiona Murray, associate dean for innovation and inclusion in the MIT Sloan School of Management; the William Porter Professor of Entrepreneurship; co-director of the MIT Innovation Initiative; and faculty director of the MIT Legatum Center
  • Amy Schulman, founding CEO of Lyndra Therapeutics and partner at Polaris Partners
  • Nandita Shangari, managing director at Novartis Venture Fund

“As an investment firm dedicated to supporting entrepreneurs, we are acutely aware of the limited number of companies founded and led by women in academia. We believe humanity should be benefiting from brilliant ideas and scientific breakthroughs from women in science, which could address many of the world’s most pressing problems. Together with MIT, we are providing an opportunity for women faculty members to enhance their visibility and gain access to the venture capital ecosystem,” says Andrea Jackson, director at Northpond Ventures.

“This first cohort is representative of the unrealized opportunity this program is designed to capture. While it will take a while to build a robust community of connections and role models, I am pleased and confident this program will make entrepreneurship more accessible and inclusive to our community, which will greatly benefit society,” says Susan Hockfield, MIT president emerita.

The MIT Future Founders Prize Competition cohort members were selected from schools across MIT, including the School of Science, the School of Engineering, and Media Lab within the School of Architecture and Planning. They are:

Polina Anikeeva is professor of materials science and engineering and brain and cognitive sciences, an associate member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and the associate director of the Research Laboratory of Electronics. She is particularly interested in advancing the possibility of future neuroprosthetics, through biologically-informed materials synthesis, modeling, and device fabrication. Anikeeva earned her BS in biophysics from St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University and her PhD in materials science and engineering from MIT.

Natalie Artzi is principal research scientist in the Institute of Medical Engineering and Science and an assistant professor in the department of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Through the development of smart materials and medical devices, her research seeks to “personalize” medical interventions based on the specific presentation of diseased tissue in a given patient. She earned both her BS and PhD in chemical engineering from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

Laurie A. Boyer is professor of biology and biological engineering in the Department of Biology. By studying how diverse molecular programs cross-talk to regulate the developing heart, she seeks to develop new therapies that can help repair cardiac tissue. She earned her BS in biomedical science from Framingham State University and her PhD from the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Tal Cohen is associate professor in the departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Mechanical Engineering. She wields her understanding of how materials behave when they are pushed to their extremes to tackle engineering challenges in medicine and industry. She earned her BS, MS, and PhD in aerospace engineering from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

Canan Dagdeviren is assistant professor of media arts and sciences and the LG Career Development Professor of Media Arts and Sciences. Her research focus is on creating new sensing, energy harvesting, and actuation devices that can be stretched, wrapped, folded, twisted, and implanted onto the human body while maintaining optimal performance. She earned her BS in physics engineering from Hacettepe University, her MS in materials science and engineering from Sabanci University, and her PhD in materials science and engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Ariel Furst is the Raymond (1921) & Helen St. Laurent Career Development Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering. Her research addresses challenges in global health and sustainability, utilizing electrochemical methods and biomaterials engineering. She is particularly interested in new technologies that detect and treat disease. Furst earned her BS in chemistry at the University of Chicago and her PhD at Caltech.

Kristin Knouse is assistant professor in the Department of Biology and the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. She develops tools to investigate the molecular regulation of organ injury and regeneration directly within a living organism with the goal of uncovering novel therapeutic avenues for diverse diseases. She earned her BS in biology from Duke University, her PhD and MD through the Harvard and MIT MD-PhD program.

Elly Nedivi is the William R. (1964) & Linda R. Young Professor of Neuroscience at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory with joint appointments in the departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Biology. Through her research of neurons, genes, and proteins, Nedivi focuses on elucidating the cellular mechanisms that control plasticity in both the developing and adult brain. She earned her BS in biology from Hebrew University and her PhD in neuroscience from Stanford University.

Ellen Roche is associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Institute of Medical Engineering and Science, and the W.M. Keck Career Development Professor in Biomedical Engineering. Borrowing principles and design forms she observes in nature, Roche works to develop implantable therapeutic devices that assist cardiac and other biological function. She earned her bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering from the National University of Ireland at Galway, her MS in bioengineering from Trinity College Dublin, and her PhD from Harvard University.

McGovern Institute Director receives highest honor from the Society for Neuroscience

by Julie Pryor |

The Society for Neuroscience will present its highest honor, the Ralph W. Gerard Prize in Neuroscience, to McGovern Institute Director Robert Desimone at its annual meeting today.

The Gerard Prize is named for neuroscientist Ralph W. Gerard who helped establish the Society for Neuroscience, and honors “outstanding scientists who have made significant contributions to neuroscience throughout their careers.” Desimone will share the $30,000 prize with Vanderbilt University neuroscientist Jon Kaas.

Desimone is being recognized for his career contributions to understanding cortical function in the visual system. His seminal work on attention spans decades, including the discovery of a neural basis for covert attention in the temporal cortex and the creation of the biased competition model, suggesting that attention is biased towards material relevant to the task. More recent work revealed how synchronized brain rhythms help enhance visual processing. Desimone also helped discover both face cells and neural populations that identify objects even when the size or location of the object changes. His long list of contributions includes mapping the extrastriate visual cortex, publishing the first report of columns for motion processing outside the primary visual cortex, and discovering how the temporal cortex retains memories. Desimone’s work has moved the field from broad strokes of input and output to a more nuanced understanding of cortical function that allows the brain to make sense of the environment.

At its annual meeting, beginning today, the Society will honor Desimone and other leading researchers who have made significant contributions to neuroscience — including the understanding of cognitive processes, drug addiction, neuropharmacology, and theoretical models — with this year’s Outstanding Achievement Awards.

“The Society is honored to recognize this year’s awardees, whose groundbreaking research has revolutionized our understanding of the brain, from the level of the synapse to the structure and function of the cortex, shedding light on how vision, memory, perception of touch and pain, and drug
addiction are organized in the brain,” SfN President Barry Everitt, said. “This exceptional group of neuroscientists has made fundamental discoveries, paved the way for new therapeutic approaches, and introduced new tools that will lay the foundation for decades of research to come.”

Five with MIT ties elected to the National Academy of Medicine for 2021

by Julie Pryor |

The National Academy of Medicine (NAM) has announced the election of 100 new members for 2021, including two MIT faculty members and three additional Institute affiliates.

Faculty honorees include Linda G. Griffith, a professor in the MIT departments of Biological Engineering and Mechanical Engineering; and Feng Zhang, a professor in the MIT departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Biological Engineering. Guillermo Antonio Ameer SCD ’99, a professor of biomedical engineering and surgery at Northwestern University; Darrell Gaskin SM ’87, a professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins University; and Vamsi Mootha, an institute member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and former student in the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology, were also honored.

The new inductees were elected through a process that recognizes individuals who have made major contributions to the advancement of the medical sciences, health care, and public health. Election to the academy is considered one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine and recognizes individuals who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service.

Griffith, the School of Engineering Professor of Teaching Innovation and director of the Center for Gynepathology Research at MIT, is credited for her longstanding leadership in research, education, and medical translation. Specifically, the NAM recognizes her pioneering work in tissue engineering, biomaterials, and systems biology, including the development of the first “liver chip” technology. Griffith is also recognized for inventing 3D biomaterials printing and organotypic models for systems gynopathology, and for the establishment of the biological engineering department at MIT.

The academy recognizes Zhang, the Patricia and James Poitras ’63 Professor in Neuroscience at MIT, for revolutionizing molecular biology and powering transformative leaps forward in our ability to study and treat human diseases. Zhang, who also is an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and a core member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, is specifically credited for the discovery of novel microbial enzymes and their development as molecular technologies, including optogenetics and CRISPR-mediated genome editing. The academy also commends Zhang for his outstanding mentoring and professional services.

Ameer, the Daniel Hale Williams Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Surgery at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, earned his Doctor of Science degree from the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering in 1999. A professor of biomedical engineering and of surgery who is also the director of the Center for Advanced Regenerative Engineering, he is cited by the NAM “For pioneering contributions to regenerative engineering and medicine through the development, dissemination, and translation of citrate-based biomaterials, a new class of biodegradable polymers that enabled the commercialization of innovative medical devices approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in a variety of surgical procedures.”

Gaskin, the William C. and Nancy F. Richardson Professor in Health Policy and Management, Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, earned his Master of Science degree from the MIT Department of Economics in 1987. A health economist who advances community, neighborhood, and market-level policies and programs that reduce health disparities, he is cited by the NAM “For his work as a leading health economist and health services researcher who has advanced fundamental understanding of the role of place as a driver in racial and ethnic health disparities.”

Mootha, the founding co-director of the Broad Institute’s Metabolism Program, is a professor of systems biology and medicine at Harvard Medical School and a professor in the Department of Molecular Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital. An alumnus of the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology and former postdoc with the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Mootha is an expert in the mitochondrion, the “powerhouse of the cell,” and its role in human disease. The NAM cites Mootha “For transforming the field of mitochondrial biology by creatively combining modern genomics with classical bioenergetics.”

Established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences, the NAM addresses critical issues in health, science, medicine, and related policy and inspires positive actions across sectors. NAM works alongside the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering to provide independent, objective analysis and advice to the nation and conduct other activities to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine also encourage education and research, recognize outstanding contributions to knowledge, and increase public understanding of STEMM. With their election, NAM members make a commitment to volunteer their service in National Academies activities.

Data transformed

by Jennifer Michalowski |

With the tools of modern neuroscience, data accumulates quickly. Recording devices listen in on the electrical conversations between neurons, picking up the voices of hundreds of cells at a time. Microscopes zoom in to illuminate the brain’s circuitry, capturing thousands of images of cells’ elaborately branched paths. Functional MRIs detect changes in blood flow to map activity within a person’s brain, generating a complete picture by compiling hundreds of scans.

“When I entered neuroscience about 20 years ago, data were extremely precious, and ideas, as the expression went, were cheap. That’s no longer true,” says McGovern Associate Investigator Ila Fiete. “We have an embarrassment of wealth in the data but lack sufficient conceptual and mathematical scaffolds to understand it.”

Fiete will lead the McGovern Institute’s new K. Lisa Yang Integrative Computational Neuroscience (ICoN) Center, whose scientists will create mathematical models and other computational tools to confront the current deluge of data and advance our understanding of the brain and mental health. The center, funded by a $24 million donation from philanthropist Lisa Yang, will take a uniquely collaborative approach to computational neuroscience, integrating data from MIT labs to explain brain function at every level, from the molecular to the behavioral.

“Driven by technologies that generate massive amounts of data, we are entering a new era of translational neuroscience research,” says Yang, whose philanthropic investment in MIT research now exceeds $130 million. “I am confident that the multidisciplinary expertise convened by this center will revolutionize how we synthesize this data and ultimately understand the brain in health and disease.”

Data integration

Fiete says computation is particularly crucial to neuroscience because the brain is so staggeringly complex. Its billions of neurons, which are themselves complicated and diverse, interact with one other through trillions of connections.

“Conceptually, it’s clear that all these interactions are going to lead to pretty complex things. And these are not going to be things that we can explain in stories that we tell,” Fiete says. “We really will need mathematical models. They will allow us to ask about what changes when we perturb one or several components — greatly accelerating the rate of discovery relative to doing those experiments in real brains.”

By representing the interactions between the components of a neural circuit, a model gives researchers the power to explore those interactions, manipulate them, and predict the circuit’s behavior under different conditions.

“You can observe these neurons in the same way that you would observe real neurons. But you can do even more, because you have access to all the neurons and you have access to all the connections and everything in the network,” explains computational neuroscientist and McGovern Associate Investigator Guangyu Robert Yang (no relation to Lisa Yang), who joined MIT as a junior faculty member in July 2021.

Many neuroscience models represent specific functions or parts of the brain. But with advances in computation and machine learning, along with the widespread availability of experimental data with which to test and refine models, “there’s no reason that we should be limited to that,” he says.

Robert Yang’s team at the McGovern Institute is working to develop models that integrate multiple brain areas and functions. “The brain is not just about vision, just about cognition, just about motor control,” he says. “It’s about all of these things. And all these areas, they talk to one another.” Likewise, he notes, it’s impossible to separate the molecules in the brain from their effects on behavior – although those aspects of neuroscience have traditionally been studied independently, by researchers with vastly different expertise.

The ICoN Center will eliminate the divides, bringing together neuroscientists and software engineers to deal with all types of data about the brain. To foster interdisciplinary collaboration, every postdoctoral fellow and engineer at the center will work with multiple faculty mentors. Working in three closely interacting scientific cores, fellows will develop computational technologies for analyzing molecular data, neural circuits, and behavior, such as tools to identify pat-terns in neural recordings or automate the analysis of human behavior to aid psychiatric diagnoses. These technologies will also help researchers model neural circuits, ultimately transforming data into knowledge and understanding.

“Lisa is focused on helping the scientific community realize its goals in translational research,” says Nergis Mavalvala, dean of the School of Science and the Curtis and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics. “With her generous support, we can accelerate the pace of research by connecting the data to the delivery of tangible results.”

Computational modeling

In its first five years, the ICoN Center will prioritize four areas of investigation: episodic memory and exploration, including functions like navigation and spatial memory; complex or stereotypical behavior, such as the perseverative behaviors associated with autism and obsessive-compulsive disorder; cognition and attention; and sleep. The goal, Fiete says, is to model the neuronal interactions that underlie these functions so that researchers can predict what will happen when something changes — when certain neurons become more active or when a genetic mutation is introduced, for example. When paired with experimental data from MIT labs, the center’s models will help explain not just how these circuits work, but also how they are altered by genes, the environment, aging, and disease.

These focus areas encompass circuits and behaviors often affected by psychiatric disorders and neurodegeneration, and models will give researchers new opportunities to explore their origins and potential treatment strategies. “I really think that the future of treating disorders of the mind is going to run through computational modeling,” says McGovern Associate Investigator Josh McDermott.

In McDermott’s lab, researchers are modeling the brain’s auditory circuits. “If we had a perfect model of the auditory system, we would be able to understand why when somebody loses their hearing, auditory abilities degrade in the very particular ways in which they degrade,” he says. Then, he says, that model could be used to optimize hearing aids by predicting how the brain would interpret sound altered in various ways by the device.

Similar opportunities will arise as researchers model other brain systems, McDermott says, noting that computational models help researchers grapple with a dauntingly vast realm of possibilities. “There’s lots of different ways the brain can be set up, and lots of different potential treatments, but there is a limit to the number of neuroscience or behavioral experiments you can run,” he says. “Doing experiments on a computational system is cheap, so you can explore the dynamics of the system in a very thorough way.”

The ICoN Center will speed the development of the computational tools that neuroscientists need, both for basic understanding of the brain and clinical advances. But Fiete hopes for a culture shift within neuroscience, as well. “There are a lot of brilliant students and postdocs who have skills that are mathematics and computational and modeling based,” she says. “I think once they know that there are these possibilities to collaborate to solve problems related to psychiatric disorders and how we think, they will see that this is an exciting place to apply their skills, and we can bring them in.”

New integrative computational neuroscience center established at MIT’s McGovern Institute

by Jennifer Michalowski |

With the tools of modern neuroscience, researchers can peer into the brain with unprecedented accuracy. Recording devices listen in on the electrical conversations between neurons, picking up the voices of hundreds of cells at a time. Genetic tools allow us to focus on specific types of neurons based on their molecular signatures. Microscopes zoom in to illuminate the brain’s circuitry, capturing thousands of images of elaborately branched dendrites. Functional MRIs detect changes in blood flow to map activity within a person’s brain, generating a complete picture by compiling hundreds of scans.

This deluge of data provides insights into brain function and dynamics at different levels – molecules, cells, circuits, and behavior — but the insights often remain compartmentalized in separate research silos. An innovative new center at MIT’s McGovern Institute aims to leverage them into powerful revelations of the brain’s inner workings.

The K. Lisa Yang Integrative Computational Neuroscience (ICoN) Center will create advanced mathematical models and computational tools to synthesize the deluge of data across scales and advance our understanding of the brain and mental health.

The center, funded by a $24 million donation from philanthropist Lisa Yang and led by McGovern Institute Associate Investigator Ila Fiete, will take a collaborative approach to computational neuroscience, integrating cutting-edge modeling techniques and data from MIT labs to explain brain function at every level, from the molecular to the behavioral.

“Our goal is that sophisticated, truly integrated computational models of the brain will make it possible to identify how ‘control knobs’ such as genes, proteins, chemicals, and environment drive thoughts and behavior, and to make inroads toward urgent unmet needs in understanding and treating brain disorders,” says Fiete, who is also a brain and cognitive sciences professor at MIT.

“Driven by technologies that generate massive amounts of data, we are entering a new era of translational neuroscience research,” says Yang, whose philanthropic investment in MIT research now exceeds $130 million. “I am confident that the multidisciplinary expertise convened by the ICoN center will revolutionize how we synthesize this data and ultimately understand the brain in health and disease.”

Connecting the data

It is impossible to separate the molecules in the brain from their effects on behavior – although those aspects of neuroscience have traditionally been studied independently, by researchers with vastly different expertise. The ICoN Center will eliminate the divides, bringing together neuroscientists and software engineers to deal with all types of data about the brain.

“The center’s highly collaborative structure, which is essential for unifying multiple levels of understanding, will enable us to recruit talented young scientists eager to revolutionize the field of computational neuroscience,” says Robert Desimone, director of the McGovern Institute. “It is our hope that the ICoN Center’s unique research environment will truly demonstrate a new academic research structure that catalyzes bold, creative research.”

To foster interdisciplinary collaboration, every postdoctoral fellow and engineer at the center will work with multiple faculty mentors. In order to attract young scientists and engineers to the field of computational neuroscience, the center will also provide four graduate fellowships to MIT students each year in perpetuity. Interacting closely with three scientific cores, engineers and fellows will develop computational models and technologies for analyzing molecular data, neural circuits, and behavior, such as tools to identify patterns in neural recordings or automate the analysis of human behavior to aid psychiatric diagnoses. These technologies and models will be instrumental in synthesizing data into knowledge and understanding.

Center priorities

In its first five years, the ICoN Center will prioritize four areas of investigation: episodic memory and exploration, including functions like navigation and spatial memory; complex or stereotypical behavior, such as the perseverative behaviors associated with autism and obsessive-compulsive disorder; cognition and attention; and sleep. Models of complex behavior will be created in collaboration with clinicians and researchers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

The goal, Fiete says, is to model the neuronal interactions that underlie these functions so that researchers can predict what will happen when something changes — when certain neurons become more active or when a genetic mutation is introduced, for example. When paired with experimental data from MIT labs, the center’s models will help explain not just how these circuits work, but also how they are altered by genes, the environment, aging, and disease. These focus areas encompass circuits and behaviors often affected by psychiatric disorders and neurodegeneration, and models will give researchers new opportunities to explore their origins and potential treatment strategies.

“Lisa Yang is focused on helping the scientific community realize its goals in translational research,” says Nergis Mavalvala, dean of the School of Science and the Curtis and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics. “With her generous support, we can accelerate the pace of research by connecting the data to the delivery of tangible results.”