Elizabeth Pollina is a molecular neuroscientist studying the mechanisms that preserve longevity and promote rejuvenation in the nervous system. Accumulating damage to neuronal genomes is an emerging hallmark of brain aging and neurodegeneration. Yet, we lack a fundamental understanding of how our highly specialized neurons repair genomic insults in vivo and how the dynamic stimuli neurons receive across a lifetime further impinge on the genome. The Pollina Lab leverages interdisciplinary tools from neuroscience, epigenetics, and DNA repair to uncover how long-lived cells of the brain protect their genomes in response to diverse physiological cues and its relevance to neurological disease.

Dr Pollina is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Developmental Biology at Washington University in St Louis.  Before joining the faculty, she trained in molecular biology as an undergraduate at Princeton University. She went on to earn her PhD in cancer biology with Anne Brunet at Stanford University and completed her postdoctoral training with Michael Greenberg in molecular neurobiology at Harvard Medical School. In addition to the Vallee Scholar award, she has been the recipient of an NIH K99/R00 transition award, a Rita Allen Scholar award, a Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship in Neuroscience, the Pershing Square MIND (Maximizing Innovation in Neuroscience Discovery) prize, and a Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative Collaborative Pairs in Neurodegeneration award.  

Pollina Lab