Investigator, Instructor NSI Neuro Research Fac MGPO, Mass General Research Institute

Assistant Professor of Neurology Harvard Medical School

PhD Johns Hopkins University 2016

alzheimer's disease; basal forebrain; bioelectronics; cognition; dementia; gamma oscillations; optogenetics; parvalbumin neurons; systems neuroscience I am a Principal Investigator and Head of the Bioelectronics Lab of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at the MGH and an Assistant Professor of Neurology at HMS. After earning my PhD at Johns Hopkins University in neuroscience of attention, learning and memory, I completed my postdoctoral training on neural circuits of motivation at the National Institute on Drug Abuse and sleep and neural oscillations research at HMS. My postdoctoral work at HMS supported by competitive NHLBI T32 and NIMH F32 NRSA grants focused on parvalbumin-expressing neurons in the basal forebrain and their role in attention through their control of cortical oscillations, i.e. 'brainwaves'. I am PI on a NIA K99/R00 Pathway to Independence award that targets basal forebrain parvalbumin neurons to investigate therapeutic mechanism of widespread evoked gamma oscillations in preclinical models of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). My team and I endeavor to translate our work into new treatments for AD and other causes of dementia.

I am committed to developing the next generation of scientists and physicians. I co-mentor one HMS Instructor and co-mentored three HMS postdocs; I worked closely with one postdoc on her K99 application and co-authored papers with the other two. I mentored three Harvard undergraduates; two received Harvard College Research Program funding and one completed a Harvard PRISE fellowship and is now pursuing a thesis as a Mind Brain Behavior Mary Gordon Roberts Research Fellow. I served as thesis advisor for a Boston University (BU) undergraduate thesis, a Princeton University undergraduate thesis and a Maastricht University Master’s thesis. My BU student was runner-up for the Neuroscience College Prize given to the most outstanding student in the program. My Princeton student received a Neuroscience Research Award, additional funding for her thesis (approximately $7,000), and will be pursuing MD at UCSF. My Maastricht mentee was one of two invited to speak about their research at their graduation ceremony, an honor reserved for the most impressive students, and she is now pursuing PhD at University of Zurich. Two technicians under my supervision earned MGH Pillars of Excellence Awards in recognition of their exemplary performance. I trained interns from Oxford, Dartmouth, Drexel, Northeastern, North Shore Community College and one who is now a prestigious UVA Jefferson Scholar. I innovated an apprenticeship-style graduate school preparatory course on scientific communication through writing, philosophy of science, and career development and six graduates of the course are currently enrolled in PhD programs (UMass Amherst Neuroscience and Behavior, UConn Immunology, Cornell Weill Neuroscience, Columbia Biomedical Engineering, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Queen Mary University of London). The goal of this course is to help mentees conceptualize, contextualize, and articulate their work, interests, and long-term goals in a clear and compelling manner. As a result of this course, one mentee, now at QMUL, switched fields with my enduring support to study her passion (bumblebees) leading to co-authorship on recent publications in Nature (Bridges et al. Chittka, 2024) and eLife (MaBouDi et al. Chittka, 2025).

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