People
RSZ TNC Faculty
Emily K. Osterweil, PhD
Faculty, Harvard Medical School; Faculty, Rosamund Stone Zander Translational Neuroscience Center at Boston Children’s Hospital
Dr. Osterweil’s research seeks to understand how protein synthesis is used by neurons to support long-term changes in brain function. She performed seminal studies identifying altered protein synthesis as a point of convergence for several monogenic causes of autism and intellectual disability (ID), including the FMR1 mutation responsible for Fragile X Syndrome (FXS). This work identified multiple novel therapeutic strategies that have inspired clinical trials, and suggested new frameworks for understanding the role of translation in specific brain circuits. Her current work is using several molecular strategies including cell type-specific TRAP-seq to study specific neural circuits in autism models. This continues to identify novel disease mechanisms and suggest new avenues for therapeutic intervention.
Dr. Osterweil is an Associate Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, a faculty member of the Rosamund Stone Zander Translational Neuroscience Center, a Visiting Professor at the University of Edinburgh, and a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow. She received her PhD in Neuroscience from Yale University, and performed postdoctoral research in the lab of Mark Bear at the Picower Institute at MIT. She was awarded a generous fellowship from the Wellcome Trust to establish her independent position at the University of Edinburgh, where she published several high-profile studies uncovering novel disease mechanisms in FXS and served as a founding PI for the creation of the Simons Center for the Developing Brain (SIDB).