Institute News: Announcements

Michale Fee appointed head of MIT’s Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department

by Tristan Davies | BCS |

McGovern Investigator Michale Fee at work in the lab with postdoc Galen Lynch. Photo: Justin Knight

Michale Fee, the Glen V. and Phyllis F. Dorflinger Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, has been named as the new head of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS) effective May 1, 2021.

Fee, who is an investigator in the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, succeeds James DiCarlo, the Peter de Florez Professor of Neuroscience, who announced in December that he was stepping down to become director of the MIT Quest for Intelligence.

“I want to thank Jim for his impressive work over the last nine years as head,” says Fee. “I know firsthand from my time as associate department head that BCS is in good shape and on a steady course. Jim has set a standard of transparent and collaborative leadership, which is a solid foundation for making our community stronger on all fronts.” Fee notes that his first mission is to continue the initiatives begun under DiCarlo’s leadership—in academics (especially Course 6-9), mentoring, and diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice—while maintaining the highest standards of excellence in research and education.

“Jim has overseen significant growth in the faculty and its impact, as well as important academic initiatives to strengthen the department’s graduate and undergraduate programs,” says Nergis Mavalvala, dean of the School of Science. “His emphasis on building ties among BCS, the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory has brought innumerable new collaborations among researchers and helped solidify Building 46 and MIT as world leaders in brain science.”

Fee earned his BE in engineering physics in 1985 at the University of Michigan, and his PhD in applied physics at Stanford University in 1992, under the mentorship of Nobel laureate Stephen Chu. His doctoral work was followed by research in the Biological Computation Department at Bell Laboratories. He joined MIT and BCS as an associate professor in 2003 and was promoted to full professor in 2008.

He has served since 2012 as associate department head for education in BCS, overseeing significant evolution in the department’s academic programs, including a complete reworking of the Course 9 curriculum and the establishment in 2019 of Course 6-9, Computation and Cognition, in partnership with EECS.

In his research, Fee explores the neural mechanisms by which the brain learns complex sequential behaviors, using the learning of song by juvenile zebra finches as a model. He has brought new experimental and computational methods to bear on these questions, identifying a number of circuits used to learn, modify, time, and coordinate the development and utterance of song syllables.

“His work is emblematic of the department in that it crosses technical and disciplinary boundaries in search of the most significant discoveries,” says DiCarlo. “His research background gives Michale a deep appreciation of the importance of every sub-discipline in our community and a broad understanding of the importance of their connections with each other.”

Fee has received numerous honors and awards for his research and teaching, including the MIT Fundamental Science Investigator Award in 2017, the MIT School of Science Teaching Prize for Undergraduate Education in 2016, the BCS Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 2015, and the Lawrence Katz Prize for Innovative Research in Neuroscience from Duke University in 2012.

Fee will be the sixth head of the department, after founding chair Hans-Lukas Teuber (1964–77), Richard Held (1977–86), Emilio Bizzi (1986–97), Mriganka Sur (1997–2012), and James DiCarlo (2012–21).

Nine MIT students awarded 2021 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans

by Julia Mongo | Office of Distinguished Fellowships |

An MIT senior and eight MIT graduate students are among the 30 recipients of this year’s P.D. Soros Fellowships for New Americans. In addition to senior Fiona Chen, MIT’s newest Soros winners include graduate students Aziza Almanakly, Alaleh Azhir, Brian Y. Chang PhD ’18, James Diao, Charlie ChangWon Lee, Archana Podury, Ashwin Sah ’20, and Enrique Toloza. Six of the recipients are enrolled at the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology.

P.D. Soros Fellows receive up to $90,000 to fund their graduate studies and join a lifelong community of new Americans from different backgrounds and fields. The 2021 class was selected from a pool of 2,445 applicants, marking the most competitive year in the fellowship’s history.

The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans program honors the contributions of immigrants and children of immigrants to the United States. As Fiona Chen says, “Being a new American has required consistent confrontation with the struggles that immigrants and racial minorities face in the U.S. today. It has meant frequent difficulties with finding security and comfort in new contexts. But it has also meant continual growth in learning to love the parts of myself — the way I look; the things that my family and I value — that have marked me as different, or as an outsider.”

Students interested in applying to the P.D. Soros fellowship should contact Kim Benard, assistant dean of distinguished fellowships in Career Advising and Professional Development.

Aziza Almanakly

Aziza Almanakly, a PhD student in electrical engineering and computer science, researches microwave quantum optics with superconducting qubits for quantum communication under Professor William Oliver in the Department of Physics. Almanakly’s career goal is to engineer multi-qubit systems that push boundaries in quantum technology.

Born and raised in northern New Jersey, Almanakly is the daughter of Syrian immigrants who came to the United States in the early 1990s in pursuit of academic opportunities. As the civil war in Syria grew dire, more of her relatives sought asylum in the U.S. Almanakly grew up around extended family who built a new version of their Syrian home in New Jersey.

Following in the footsteps of her mathematically minded father, Almanakly studied electrical engineering at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. She also pursued research opportunities in experimental quantum computing at Princeton University, the City University of New York, New York University, and Caltech.

Almanakly recognizes the importance of strong mentorship in diversifying engineering. She uses her unique experience as a New American and female engineer to encourage students from underrepresented backgrounds to enter STEM fields.

Alaleh Azhir

Alaleh Azhir grew up in Iran, where she pursued her passion for mathematics. She immigrated with her mother to the United States at age 14. Determined to overcome strict gender roles she had witnessed for women, Azhir is dedicated to improving health care for them.

Azhir graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 2019 with a perfect GPA as a triple major in biomedical engineering, computer science, and applied mathematics and statistics. A Rhodes and Barry Goldwater Scholar, she has developed many novel tools for visualization and analysis of genomics data at Johns Hopkins University, Harvard University, MIT, the National Institutes of Health, and laboratories in Switzerland.

After completing a master’s in statistical science at Oxford University, Azhir began her MD studies in the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology. Her thesis focuses on the role of X and Y sex chromosomes on disease manifestations. Through medical training, she aims to build further computational tools specifically for preventive care for women. She has also founded and directs the nonprofit organization, Frappa, aimed at mentoring women living in Iran and helping them to immigrate abroad through the graduate school application process.

Brian Y. Chang PhD ’18

Born in Johnson City, New York, Brian Y. Chang PhD ’18 is the son of immigrants from the Shanghai municipality and Shandong Province in China. He pursued undergraduate and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, graduating in a combined four years with honors.

In 2018, Chang completed a PhD in medical engineering at MIT. Under the mentorship of Professor Elazer Edelman, Chang developed methods that make advanced cardiac technologies more accessible. The resulting approaches are used in hospitals around the world. Chang has published extensively and holds five patents.

With the goal of harnessing the power of engineering to improve patient care, Chang co-founded X-COR Therapeutics, a seed-funded medical device startup developing a more accessible treatment for lung failure with the potential to support patients with severe Covid-19 and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

After spending time in the hospital connecting with patients and teaching cardiovascular pathophysiology to medical students, Chang decided to attend medical school. He is currently a medical student in the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology. Chang hopes to advance health care through medical device innovation and education as a future physician-scientist, entrepreneur, and educator.

Fiona Chen

MIT senior Fiona Chen was born in Cedar Park, Texas, the daughter of immigrants from China. Witnessing how her own and many other immigrant families faced significant difficulties finding work and financial stability sparked her interest in learning about poverty and economic inequality.

At MIT, Chen has pursued degrees in economics and mathematics. Her economics research projects have examined important policy issues — social isolation among students, global development and poverty, universal health-care systems, and the role of technology in shaping the labor market.

An active member of the MIT community, Chen has served as the officer on governance and officer on policy of the Undergraduate Association, MIT’s student government; the opinion editor of The Tech student newspaper; the undergraduate representative of several Institute-wide committees, including MIT’s Corporation Joint Advisory Committee; and one of the founding members of MIT Students Against War. In each of these roles, she has worked to advocate for policies to support underrepresented groups at MIT.

As a Soros fellow, Chen will pursue a PhD in economics to deepen her understanding of economic policy. Her ultimate goal is to become a professor who researches poverty and economic inequality, and applies her findings to craft policy solutions.

James Diao

James Diao graduated from Yale University with degrees in statistics and biochemistry and is currently a medical student at the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology. He aspires to give voice to patient perspectives in the development and evaluation of health-care technology.

Diao grew up in Houston’s Chinatown, and spent summers with his extended family in Jiangxian. Diao’s family later moved to Fort Bend, Texas, where he found a pediatric oncologist mentor who introduced him to the wonders of modern molecular biology.

Diao’s interests include the responsible development of technology. At Apple, he led projects to validate wearable health features in diverse populations; at PathAI, he built deep learning models to broaden access to pathologist services; at Yale, where he worked on standardizing analyses of exRNA biomarkers; and at Harvard, he studied the impacts of clinical guidelines on marginalized groups.

Diao’s lead author research in the New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA systematically compared race-based and race-free equations for kidney function, and demonstrated that up to 1 million Black Americans may receive unequal kidney care due to their race. He has also published articles on machine learning and precision medicine.

Charlie ChangWon Lee

Born in Seoul, South Korea, Charlie ChangWon Lee was 10 when his family immigrated to the United States and settled in Palisades Park, New Jersey. The stress of his parents’ lack of health coverage ignited Lee’s determination to study the reasons for the high cost of health care in the U.S. and learn how to care for uninsured families like his own.

Lee graduated summa cum laude in integrative biology from Harvard College, winning the Hoopes Prize for his thesis on the therapeutic potential of human gut microbes. Lee’s research on novel therapies led him to question how newly approved, and expensive, medications could reach more patients.

At the Program on Regulation, Therapeutics, and Law (PORTAL) at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Lee studied policy issues involving pharmaceutical drug pricing, drug development, and medication use and safety. His articles have appeared in JAMA, Health Affairs, and Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

As a first-year medical student at the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program, Lee is investigating policies to incentivize vaccine and biosimilar drug development. He hopes to find avenues to bridge science and policy and translate medical innovations into accessible, affordable therapies.

Archana Podury

The daughter of Indian immigrants, Archana Podury was born in Mountain View, California. As an undergraduate at Cornell University, she studied the neural circuits underlying motor learning. Her growing interest in whole-brain dynamics led her to the Princeton Neuroscience Institute and Neuralink, where she discovered how brain-machine interfaces could be used to understand diffuse networks in the brain.

While studying neural circuits, Podury worked at a syringe exchange in Ithaca, New York, where she witnessed firsthand the mechanics of court-based drug rehabilitation. Now, as an MD student in the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program, Podury is interested in combining computational and social approaches to neuropsychiatric disease.

In the Boyden Lab at the MIT McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Podury is developing human brain organoid models to better characterize circuit dysfunction in neurodevelopmental disorders. Concurrently, her work in the Dhand Lab at Brigham and Women’s Hospital applies network science tools to understand how patients’ social environments influence their health outcomes following acute neurological injury.

Podury hopes that focusing on both neural and social networks can lead toward a more comprehensive, and compassionate, approach to health and disease.

Ashwin Sah ’20

Ashwin Sah ’20 was born and raised in Portland, Oregon, the son of Indian immigrants. He developed a passion for mathematics research as an undergraduate at MIT, where he conducted research under Professor Yufei Zhao, as well as at the Duluth and Emory REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) programs.

Sah has given talks on his work at multiple professional venues. His undergraduate research in varied areas of combinatorics and discrete mathematics culminated in the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and the Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize for Outstanding Research in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Student. Additionally, his work on diagonal Ramsey numbers was recently featured in Quanta Magazine.

Beyond research, Sah has pursued opportunities to give back to the math community, helping to organize or grade competitions such as the Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament and the USA Mathematical Olympiad. He has also been a grader at the Mathematical Olympiad Program, a camp for talented high-school students in the United States, and an instructor for the Monsoon Math Camp, a virtual program aimed at teaching higher mathematics to high school students in India.

Sah is currently a PhD student in mathematics at MIT, where he continues to work with Zhao.

Enrique Toloza

Enrique Toloza was born in Los Angeles, California, the child of two immigrants: one from Colombia who came to the United States for a PhD and the other from the Philippines who grew up in California and went on to medical school. Their literal marriage of science and medicine inspired Toloza to become a physician-scientist.

Toloza majored in physics and Spanish literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He eventually settled on an interest in theoretical neuroscience after a summer research internship at MIT and completing an honors thesis on noninvasive brain stimulation.

After college, Toloza joined Professor Mark Harnett’s laboratory at MIT for a year. He went on to enroll in the Harvard-MIT MD/PhD program, studying within the Health Sciences and Technology MD curriculum at Harvard and the PhD program at MIT. For his PhD, Toloza rejoined Harnett to conduct research on the biophysics of dendritic integration and the contribution of dendrites to cortical computations in the brain.

Toloza is passionate about expanding health care access to immigrant populations. In college, he led the interpreting team at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s student-run health clinic; at Harvard Medical School, he has worked with Spanish-speaking patients as a student clinician.

Four MIT scientists honored with 2021 National Academy of Sciences awards

Anne Trafton |

Four MIT scientists are among the 20 recipients of the 2021 Academy Honors for major contributions to science, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) announced at its annual meeting. The individuals are recognized for their “extraordinary scientific achievements in a wide range of fields spanning the physical, biological, social, and medical sciences.”

The awards recognize: Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, for contributions to the fields of nanoscience and nanotechnology through his discovery of correlated insulator behavior and unconventional superconductivity in magic-angle graphene superlattices; Aviv Regev, for using interdisciplinary information or techniques to solve a contemporary challenge; Susan Solomon, for contributions to understanding and communicating the causes of ozone depletion and climate change; and Feng Zhang, for pioneering achievements developing CRISPR tools with the potential to diagnose and treat disease.

Pablo Jarillo-Herrero: Award for Scientific Discovery

Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, a Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics, is the recipient of the NAS Award for Scientific Discovery for his pioneering developments in nanoscience and nanotechnology, which is presented to scientists in the fields of astronomy, materials science, or physics. His findings expand nanoscience by demonstrating for the first time that orientation can be used to dramatically control nanomaterial properties and to design new nanomaterials. This work lays the groundwork for developing a whole new family of 2D materials and has had a transformative impact on the field and on condensed-matter physics.

The biannual award recognizes “an accomplishment or discovery in basic research, achieved within the previous five years, that is expected to have a significant impact on one or more of the following fields: astronomy, biochemistry, biophysics, chemistry, materials science, or physics.”

In 2018, his research group discovered that by rotating two layers of graphene relative to each other by a magic angle, the bilayer material can be turned from a metal into an electrical insulator or even a superconductor. This discovery has fostered new theoretical and experimental research, inspiring the interest of technologists in nanoelectronics. The result is a new field in condensed-matter physics that has the potential to result in materials that conduct electricity without resistance at room temperature.

Aviv Regev: James Prize in Science and Technology Integration

Aviv Regev, who is a professor of biology, a core member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, a member of the Koch Institute, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator has been selected for the inaugural James Prize in Science and Technology Integration, along with Harvard Medical School Professor Allon Kelin, for “their concurrent development of now widely adopted massively parallel single-cell genomics to interrogate the gene expression profiles that define, at the level of individual cells, the distinct cell types in metazoan tissues, their developmental trajectories, and disease states, which integrated tools from molecular biology, engineering, statistics, and computer science.”

The prize recognizes individuals “who are able to adopt or adapt information or techniques from outside their fields” to “solve a major contemporary challenge not addressable from a single disciplinary perspective.”

Regev is credited with forging new ways to unite the disciplines of biology, computational science, and engineering as a pioneer in the field of single-cell biology, including developing some of its core experimental and analysis tools, and their application to discover cell types, states, programs, environmental responses, development, tissue locations, and regulatory circuits, and deploying these to assemble cellular atlases of the human body that illuminate mechanisms of disease with remarkable fidelity.

Susan Solomon: Award for Chemistry in Service to Society

Susan Solomon, the Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental Studies in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences who holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Chemistry, is the recipient of the Award for Chemistry in Service to Society for “influential and incisive application of atmospheric chemistry to understand our most critical environmental issues — ozone layer depletion and climate change — and for her effective communication of environmental science to leaders to facilitate policy changes.”

The award is given biannually for “contributions to chemistry, either in fundamental science or its application, that clearly satisfy a societal need.”

Solomon is globally recognized as a leader in atmospheric science, notably for her insights in explaining the cause of the Antarctic ozone “hole.” She and her colleagues have made important contributions to understanding chemistry-climate coupling, including pioneering research on the irreversibility of global warming linked to anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, and on the influence of the ozone hole on the climate of the southern hemisphere.

Her work has had an enormous effect on policy and society, including the transition away from ozone-depleting substances and to environmentally benign chemicals. The work set the stage for the Paris Agreement on climate, and she continues to educate policymakers, the public, and the next generation of scientists.

Feng Zhang: Richard Lounsbery Award

Feng Zhang, who is the James and Patricia Poitras Professor of Neuroscience at MIT, an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences and biological engineering at MIT, and a core member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, is the recipient of the Richard Lounsbery Award for pioneering CRISPR-mediated genome editing.

The award recognizes “extraordinary scientific achievement in biology and medicine” as well as stimulating research and encouraging reciprocal scientific exchanges between the United States and France.

Zhang continues to lead the field through the discovery of novel CRISPR systems and their development as molecular tools with the potential to diagnose and treat disease, such as disorders affecting the nervous system. His contributions in genome engineering, as well as his earlier work developing optogenetics, are enabling a deeper understanding of behavioral neural circuits and advances in gene therapy for treating disease.

In addition, Zhang has championed the open sharing of the technologies he has developed through extensive resource sharing. The tools from his lab are being used by thousands of scientists around the world to accelerate research in nearly every field of the life sciences. Even as biomedical researchers around the world adopt Zhang’s discoveries and his tools enter the clinic to treat genetic diseases, he continues to innovate and develop new technologies to advance science.

The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit society of distinguished scholars, established in 1863 by the U.S. Congress. The NAS is charged with providing independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science and technology as well as encouraging education and research, recognize outstanding contributions to knowledge, and increasing public understanding in matters of science, engineering, and medicine. Winners received their awards, which include a monetary prize, during a virtual ceremony at the 158th NAS Annual Meeting.

This story is a modified compilation from several National Academy of Sciences press releases.

James DiCarlo named director of the MIT Quest for Intelligence

by Tristan Davies |

James DiCarlo, the Peter de Florez Professor of Neuroscience, has been appointed to the role of director of the MIT Quest for Intelligence. MIT Quest was launched in 2018 to discover the basis of natural intelligence, create new foundations for machine intelligence, and deliver new tools and technologies for humanity.

As director, DiCarlo will forge new collaborations with researchers within MIT and beyond to accelerate progress in understanding intelligence and developing the next generation of intelligence tools.

“We have discovered and developed surprising new connections between natural and artificial intelligence,” says DiCarlo, currently head of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS). “The scientific understanding of natural intelligence, and advances in building artificial intelligence with positive real-world impact, are interlocked aspects of a unified, collaborative grand challenge, and MIT must continue to lead the way.”

Aude Oliva, senior research scientist at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and the MIT director of the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, will lead industry engagements as director of MIT Quest Corporate. Nicholas Roy, professor of aeronautics and astronautics and a member of CSAIL, will lead the development of systems to deliver on the mission as director of MIT Quest Systems Engineering. Daniel Huttenlocher, dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, will serve as chair of MIT Quest.

“The MIT Quest’s leadership team has positioned this initiative to spearhead our understanding of natural and artificial intelligence, and I am delighted that Jim is taking on this role,” says Huttenlocher, the Henry Ellis Warren (1894) Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

DiCarlo will step down from his current role as head of BCS, a position he has held for nearly nine years, and will continue as faculty in BCS and as an investigator in the McGovern Institute for Brain Research.

“Jim has been a highly productive leader for his department, the School of Science, and the Institute at large. I’m excited to see the impact he will make in this new role,” says Nergis Mavalvala, dean of the School of Science and the Curtis and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics.

As department head, DiCarlo oversaw significant progress in the department’s scientific and educational endeavors. Roughly a quarter of current BCS faculty were hired on his watch, strengthening the department’s foundations in cognitive, systems, and cellular and molecular brain science. In addition, DiCarlo developed a new departmental emphasis in computation, deepening BCS’s ties with the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and other MIT units such as the Center for Brains, Minds and Machines. He also developed and leads an NIH-funded graduate training program in computationally-enabled integrative neuroscience. As a result, BCS is one of the few departments in the world that is attempting to decipher, in engineering terms, how the human mind emerges from the biological components of the brain.

To prepare students for this future, DiCarlo collaborated with BCS Associate Department Head Michale Fee to design and execute a total overhaul of the Course 9 curriculum. In addition, partnering with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, BCS developed a new major, Course 6-9 (Computation and Cognition), to fill the rapidly growing interest in this interdisciplinary topic. In only its second year, Course 6-9 already has more than 100 undergraduate majors.

DiCarlo has also worked tirelessly to build a more open, connected, and supportive culture across the entire BCS community in Building 46. In this work, as in everything, DiCarlo sought to bring people together to address challenges collaboratively. He attributes progress to strong partnerships with Li-Huei Tsai, the Picower Professor of Neuroscience in BCS and director of the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory; Robert Desimone, the Doris and Don Berkey Professor in BCS and director of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research; and to the work of dozens of faculty and staff. For example, in collaboration with associate department head Professor Rebecca Saxe, the department has focused on faculty mentorship of graduate students, and, in collaboration with postdoc officer Professor Mark Bear, the department developed postdoc salary and benefit standards. Both initiatives have become models for the Institute. In recent months, DiCarlo partnered with new associate department head Professor Laura Schulz to constructively focus renewed energy and resources on initiatives to address systemic racism and promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice.

“Looking ahead, I share Jim’s vision for the research and educational programs of the department, and for enhancing its cohesiveness as a community, especially with regard to issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice,” says Mavalvala. “I am deeply committed to supporting his successor in furthering these goals while maintaining the great intellectual strength of BCS.”

In his own research, DiCarlo uses a combination of large-scale neurophysiology, brain imaging, optogenetic methods, and high-throughput computational simulations to understand the neuronal mechanisms and cortical computations that underlie human visual intelligence. Working in animal models, he and his research collaborators have established precise connections between the internal workings of the visual system and the internal workings of particular computer vision systems. And they have demonstrated that these science-to-engineering connections lead to new ways to modulate neurons deep in the brain as well as to improved machine vision systems. His lab’s goals are to help develop more human-like machine vision, new neural prosthetics to restore or augment lost senses, new learning strategies, and an understanding of how visual cognition is impaired in agnosia, autism, and dyslexia.

DiCarlo earned both a PhD in biomedical engineering and an MD from The Johns Hopkins University in 1998, and completed his postdoc training in primate visual neurophysiology at Baylor College of Medicine. He joined the MIT faculty in 2002.

A search committee will convene early this year to recommend candidates for the next department head of BCS. DiCarlo will continue to lead the department until that new head is selected.

Stars, brains, and enzymes: a celebration of MIT science

Anne Trafton |

“Our topic tonight, science and discovery, lives at the heart of MIT.” In his welcoming remarks for the first virtual MIT Better World gathering, W. Eric L. Grimson, MIT chancellor for academic advancement, detailed some of the ways MIT excels as a hub of scientific research and innovation. “Institute researchers are plumbing the secrets of the universe; modeling climate at a local, regional, and global scale; striving to understand how brains and bodies give rise to cognition and mind; and racing to find treatments and cures for diseases ranging from the acute, like Covid-19, to the chronic, like cancers and maladies of the aging brain,” said Grimson, who is also the Bernard M. Gordon Professor of Medical Engineering.

Members of the MIT community from around the globe were invited to attend the MIT Better World (Science) event, held online in November, to hear from Institute leaders, faculty, students, and alumni about the pursuit of scientific knowledge. Alumni in more than 80 countries registered to attend, and the evening put a special emphasis on Canada, which is home to a group of alumni and friends who served as virtual hosts, and to which Grimson and all of the opening session speakers captured in the video above have personal ties.

Grimson’s remarks were followed by presentations from the new dean of the MIT School of Science, Nergis Mavalvala; as well as Rebecca Saxe, the John W. Jarve (1978) Professor in Brain and Cognitive Sciences and associate investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research; and microbiology PhD student Linda Zhong-Johnson.

Mavalvala, the Curtis (1963) and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics, described how she and colleagues have worked to improve the sensitivity of instruments used to detect gravitational waves through LIGO—the landmark research endeavor that has revealed, among other recent discoveries, that colliding neutron stars are the “factories” in which heavy elements like gold and platinum are manufactured. Having begun the role of School of Science dean this fall, Mavalvala now takes joy in enabling discoveries across the MIT community, including those focused on our own corner of the universe. “It’s a vast world out there, and for us to make a better world, we must first understand that world. At MIT, that’s just what we do.”

Saxe, who uses brain imaging to study human social cognition, described prescient experiments on social isolation conducted by her lab between 2017 and 2019. “Sometimes we do science just out of curiosity,” said Saxe as she explained why she, former postdoc Livia Tomova, and fellow researchers pursued a project with uncertain applications — only to find themselves writing what Saxe now calls “the most timely and relevant paper in my life” in March, just as the Covid-19 pandemic triggered widespread isolation measures.

The third speaker, Linda Zhong-Johnson, discussed her PhD research in the labs of Anthony J. Sinskey, professor of biology, and Christopher A. Voigt, the Daniel I.C. Wang Professor of Advanced Biotechnology. Her goal is to reduce the amount of plastic in landfills and oceans by studying enzymes that could digest polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, the plastic used to make most water bottles. “We’re getting closer to the answer,” she said. “I’m grateful to be at MIT, where we have the mandate and resources to keep exploring.”

More virtual MIT Better World events on the topics of health and sustainability are planned for this coming February and March. Meanwhile, watch the full session (above) and a range of breakout sessions on topics such as the politics of molecular medicine and the Mars 2020 mission, and learn more about the MIT Campaign for a Better World at betterworld.mit.edu.

Two MIT Brain and Cognitive Sciences faculty members earn funding from the G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Foundation

by David Orenstein |

Two MIT neuroscientists have received grants from the G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Foundation to screen for genes that could help brain cells withstand Parkinson’s disease and to map how gene expression changes in the brain in response to drugs of abuse.

Myriam Heiman, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and a core member of the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and Alan Jasanoff, who is also a professor in biological engineering, brain and cognitive sciences, nuclear science and engineering and an associate investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, each received three-year awards that formally begin January 1, 2021.

Jasanoff, who also directs MIT’s Center for Neurobiological Engineering, is known for developing sensors that monitor molecular hallmarks of neural activity in the living brain, in real time, via noninvasive MRI brain scanning. One of the MRI-detectable sensors that he has developed is for dopamine, a neuromodulator that is key to learning what behaviors and contexts lead to reward. Addictive drugs artificially drive dopamine release, thereby hijacking the brain’s reward prediction system. Studies have shown that dopamine and drugs of abuse activate gene transcription in specific brain regions, and that this gene expression changes as animals are repeatedly exposed to drugs. Despite the important implications of these neuroplastic changes for the process of addiction, in which drug-seeking behaviors become compulsive, there are no effective tools available to measure gene expression across the brain in real time.

Cerebral vasculature in mouse brain. The Jasanoff lab hopes to develop a method for mapping gene expression the brain with related labeling characteristics .
Image: Alan Jasanoff

With the new Mathers funding, Jasanoff is developing new MRI-detectable sensors for gene expression. With these cutting-edge tools, Jasanoff proposes to make an activity atlas of how the brain responds to drugs of abuse, both upon initial exposure and over repeated doses that simulate the experiences of drug addicted individuals.

“Our studies will relate drug-induced brain activity to longer term changes that reshape the brain in addiction,” says Jasanoff. “We hope these studies will suggest new biomarkers or treatments.”

Dopamine-producing neurons in a brain region called the substantia nigra are known to be especially vulnerable to dying in Parkinson’s disease, leading to the severe motor difficulties experienced during the progression of the incurable, chronic neurodegenerative disorder. The field knows little about what puts specific cells at such dire risk, or what molecular mechanisms might help them resist the disease. In her research on Huntington’s disease, another incurable neurodegenerative disorder in which a specific neuron population in the striatum is especially vulnerable, Heiman has been able to use an innovative method her lab pioneered to discover genes whose expression promotes neuron survival, yielding potential new drug targets. The technique involves conducting an unbiased screen in which her lab knocks out each of the 22,000 genes expressed in the mouse brain one by one in neurons in disease model mice and healthy controls. The technique allows her to determine which genes, when missing, contribute to neuron death amid disease and therefore which genes are particularly needed for survival. The products of those genes can then be evaluated as drug targets. With the new Mathers award, Heiman plans to apply the method to study Parkinson’s disease.

An immunofluorescence image taken in a brain region called the substantia nigra (SN) highlights tyrosine hydroxylase, a protein expressed by dopamine neurons. This type of neuron in the SN is especially vulnerable to neurodegeneration in Parkinson’s disease. Image: Preston Ge/Heiman Lab

“There is currently no molecular explanation for the brain cell loss seen in Parkinson’s disease or a cure for this devastating disease,” Heiman said. “This award will allow us to perform unbiased, genome-wide genetic screens in the brains of mouse models of Parkinson’s disease, probing for genes that allow brain cells to survive the effects of cellular perturbations associated with Parkinson’s disease. I’m extremely grateful for this generous support and recognition of our work from the Mathers Foundation, and hope that our study will elucidate new therapeutic targets for the treatment and even prevention of Parkinson’s disease.”

Storytelling brings MIT neuroscience community together

by Julie Pryor |

When the coronavirus pandemic shut down offices, labs, and classrooms across the MIT campus last spring, many members of the MIT community found it challenging to remain connected to one another in meaningful ways. Motivated by a desire to bring the neuroscience community back together, the McGovern Institute hosted a virtual storytelling competition featuring a selection of postdocs, grad students, and staff from across the institute.

“This has been an unprecedented year for us all,” says McGovern Institute Director Robert Desimone. “It has been twenty years since Pat and Lore McGovern founded the McGovern Institute, and despite the challenges this anniversary year has brought to our community, I have been inspired by the strength and perseverance demonstrated by our faculty, postdocs, students and staff. The resilience of this neuroscience community – and MIT as a whole – is indeed something to celebrate.”

The McGovern Institute had initially planned to hold a large 20th anniversary celebration in the atrium of Building 46 in the fall of 2020, but the pandemic made a gathering of this size impossible. The institute instead held a series of virtual events, including the November 12 story slam on the theme of resilience.

20 Years of Discovery

by Robert Desimone |

 

McGovern Institute Director Robert Desimone.

Pat and Lore McGovern founded the McGovern Institute 20 years ago with a dual mission – to understand the brain, and to apply that knowledge to help the many people affected by brain disorders. Some of the amazing developments of the past 20 years, such as CRISPR, may seem entirely unexpected and “out of the blue.” But they were all built on a foundation of basic research spanning many years. With the incredible foundation we are building right now, I feel we are poised for many more “unexpected” discoveries in the years ahead.

I predict that in 20 years, we will have quantitative models of brain function that will not only explain how the brain gives rise to at least some aspects of our mind, but will also give us a new mechanistic understanding of brain disorders. This, in turn, will lead to new types of therapies, in what I imagine to be a post-pharmaceutical era of the future. I have no doubt that these same brain models will inspire new educational approaches for our children, and will be incorporated into whatever replaces my automobile, and iPhone, in 2040. I encourage you to read some other predictions from our faculty.

Our cutting-edge work depends not only on our stellar line up of faculty, but the more than 400 postdocs, graduate students, undergraduates, summer students, and staff who make up our community.

For this reason, I am particularly delighted to share with you McGovern’s rising stars — 20 young scientists from each of our labs — who represent the next generation of neuroscience.

And finally, we remain deeply indebted to our supporters for funding our research, including ongoing support from the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation. In recent years, more than 40% of our annual research funding has come from private individuals and foundations. This support enables critical seed funding for new research projects, the development of new technologies, our new research into autism and psychiatric disorders, and fellowships for young scientists just starting their careers. Our annual fund supporters have made possible more than 42 graduate fellowships, and you can read about some of these fellows on our website.

I hope that as you visit our website and read the pages of our special anniversary issue of Brain Scan, you will feel as optimistic as I do about our future.

Robert Desimone
Director, McGovern Institute
Doris and Don Berkey Professor of Neuroscience

New molecular therapeutics center established at MIT’s McGovern Institute

by Julie Pryor |

More than one million Americans are diagnosed with a chronic brain disorder each year, yet effective treatments for most complex brain disorders are inadequate or even nonexistent.

A major new research effort at MIT’s McGovern Institute aims to change how we treat brain disorders by developing innovative molecular tools that precisely target dysfunctional genetic, molecular, and circuit pathways.

The K. Lisa Yang and Hock E. Tan Center for Molecular Therapeutics in Neuroscience was established at MIT through a $28 million gift from philanthropist Lisa Yang and MIT alumnus Hock Tan ’75. Yang is a former investment banker who has devoted much of her time to advocacy for individuals with disabilities and autism spectrum disorders. Tan is President and CEO of Broadcom, a global technology infrastructure company. This latest gift brings Yang and Tan’s total philanthropy to MIT to more than $72 million.

Lisa Yang (center) and MIT alumnus Hock Tan ’75 with their daughter Eva (far left) pictured at the opening of the Hock E. Tan and K. Lisa Yang Center for Autism Research in 2017. Photo: Justin Knight

“In the best MIT spirit, Lisa and Hock have always focused their generosity on insights that lead to real impact,” says MIT President L. Rafael Reif. “Scientifically, we stand at a moment when the tools and insights to make progress against major brain disorders are finally within reach. By accelerating the development of promising treatments, the new center opens the door to a hopeful new future for all those who suffer from these disorders and those who love them. I am deeply grateful to Lisa and Hock for making MIT the home of this pivotal research.”

Engineering with precision

Research at the K. Lisa Yang and Hock E. Tan Center for Molecular Therapeutics in Neuroscience will initially focus on three major lines of investigation: genetic engineering using CRISPR tools, delivery of genetic and molecular cargo across the blood-brain barrier, and the translation of basic research into the clinical setting. The center will serve as a hub for researchers with backgrounds ranging from biological engineering and genetics to computer science and medicine.

“Developing the next generation of molecular therapeutics demands collaboration among researchers with diverse backgrounds,” says Robert Desimone, McGovern Institute Director and Doris and Don Berkey Professor of Neuroscience at MIT. “I am confident that the multidisciplinary expertise convened by this center will revolutionize how we improve our health and fight disease in the coming decade. Although our initial focus will be on the brain and its relationship to the body, many of the new therapies could have other health applications.”

There are an estimated 19,000 to 22,000 genes in the human genome and a third of those genes are active in the brain–the highest proportion of genes expressed in any part of the body.

Variations in genetic code have been linked to many complex brain disorders, including depression and Parkinson’s. Emerging genetic technologies, such as the CRISPR gene editing platform pioneered by McGovern Investigator Feng Zhang, hold great potential in both targeting and fixing these errant genes. But the safe and effective delivery of this genetic cargo to the brain remains a challenge.

Researchers within the new Yang-Tan Center will improve and fine-tune CRISPR gene therapies and develop innovative ways of delivering gene therapy cargo into the brain and other organs. In addition, the center will leverage newly developed single cell analysis technologies that are revealing cellular targets for modulating brain functions with unprecedented precision, opening the door for noninvasive neuromodulation as well as the development of medicines. The center will also focus on developing novel engineering approaches to delivering small molecules and proteins from the bloodstream into the brain. Desimone will direct the center and some of the initial research initiatives will be led by Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering Polina Anikeeva; Ed Boyden, the Y. Eva Tan Professor in Neurotechnology at MIT; Guoping Feng, the James W. (1963) and Patricia T. Poitras Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT; and Feng Zhang, James and Patricia Poitras Professor of Neuroscience at MIT.

Building a research hub

“My goal in creating this center is to cement the Cambridge and Boston region as the global epicenter of next-generation therapeutics research. The novel ideas I have seen undertaken at MIT’s McGovern Institute and Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard leave no doubt in my mind that major therapeutic breakthroughs for mental illness, neurodegenerative disease, autism and epilepsy are just around the corner,” says Yang.

Center funding will also be earmarked to create the Y. Eva Tan Fellows program, named for Tan and Yang’s daughter Eva, which will support fellowships for young neuroscientists and engineers eager to design revolutionary treatments for human diseases.

“We want to build a strong pipeline for tomorrow’s scientists and neuroengineers,” explains Hock Tan. “We depend on the next generation of bright young minds to help improve the lives of people suffering from chronic illnesses, and I can think of no better place to provide the very best education and training than MIT.”

The molecular therapeutics center is the second research center established by Yang and Tan at MIT. In 2017, they launched the Hock E. Tan and K. Lisa Yang Center for Autism Research, and, two years later, they created a sister center at Harvard Medical School, with the unique strengths of each institution converging toward a shared goal: understanding the basic biology of autism and how genetic and environmental influences converge to give rise to the condition, then translating those insights into novel treatment approaches.

All tools developed at the molecular therapeutics center will be shared globally with academic and clinical researchers with the goal of bringing one or more novel molecular tools to human clinical trials by 2025.

“We are hopeful that our centers, located in the heart of the Cambridge-Boston biotech ecosystem, will spur further innovation and fuel critical new insights to our understanding of health and disease,” says Yang.