Polina Anikeeva

Research

Professor Polina Anikeeva’s group draws inspiration from neurobiology to create minimally invasive materials and devices to interface with the nervous system. Professor Anikeeva’s Bioelectronics Group develops multifunctional, multimaterial fibers that enable optical, electrical, and chemical interfaces with neurons in the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral organs. These fiber-based probes empower neuroscience research by permitting recording and manipulation of neural activity. Taking advantage of low conductivity and negligible permeability of biological matter to weak magnetic fields, the research group designs and synthesizes a range of magnetic nanomaterials capable of transducing remote magnetic signals to stimuli perceived by biological receptors. To date, magnetic nanomaterials have enabled magnetothermal, magnetomechanical, and chemomagnetic modulation of neurons in vivo. The technologies developed in the Bioelectronics Group are advancing the fundamental neuroscience of brain-organ communication and paving the way to minimally invasive treatments of neurological and psychiatric conditions.

Biography

Polina Anikeeva received her BS in physics from St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University in 2003 and a PhD in materials science and engineering from MIT in 2009. She completed her postdoctoral training at Stanford University, where she created devices for optical stimulation and recording from brain circuits. She joined the MIT faculty in 2011. She serves as the director of the K. Lisa Yang Brain-Body Center at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and is an associate director of the Research Laboratory of Electronics.