Dr. Lisa Giocomo
Associate Professor Department of Neurobiology, Stanford University
Postdoctoral Fellow Norwegian University of Science and Technology
PhD in Neuroscience Boston University
While Dr. Lisa Giocomo grew up revering scientists like Jane Goodall and Diane Fossey, she did not always imagine herself as one. Her interest in science led her to pursue an undergraduate psychology major at Baylor University, and from there she planned to pursue a medical degree to become a psychiatrist. It wasn’t until she began volunteering at inpatient psychiatric facilities as an undergraduate that her interest in neuroscience was solidified. Lisa worked with teenage girls who suffered from various conditions, ranging from obsessive-compulsive disorder to depression to drug addiction, and wanted to understand the causes of these behaviors. At the time, Lisa had no idea that she would become one of the leaders in the field of neuroscience -- she just wanted to understand what in the brain was driving these behaviors.
She followed this interest in the brain to Boston University, where she pursued her Master’s degree in psychology. There, she worked as a Research Assistant in Howard Eichenbaum’s lab, shifting her focus to more basic questions that tackled understanding memory in rodents. It was during her time at Boston University that she met her future PhD advisor, Dr. Mike Hasselmo, in a computational neuroscience course he was teaching. “I was inspired by how he was using computational approaches to generate hypotheses about biology,” she recalls. “It was a tractable and beautiful way to look at complex biological systems driving complex behaviors like memory.”
With that, she decided to pursue a PhD in Dr. Hasselmo’s lab at Boston University, where she continued to study memory. Her focus was on the hippocampus, a key brain region for episodic and autobiographical memory, and how acetylcholine regulates its biophysical properties in a way that can support memory processing. She credits Dr. Hasselmo with being a wonderful and supportive mentor, who gave her a formative piece of advice early on in her career: to not take rejection in science too personally. Grants and papers will inevitably be rejected, but believing in and being excited by your own science will carry you through. Consequently, Dr. Hasselmo was supportive when Lisa's scientific excitement led her in a new research direction, away from the hippocampus. While she did a couple of projects in the lab about the hippocampus, her interests pivoted when Drs. May-Britt and Edvard Moser came to Boston to deliver a talk about a novel and exciting discovery: grid cells. Located in the entorhinal cortex, grid cells fire at spatially specific locations, creating a “grid” of firing fields to help as an animal explores its environment. The ability of a cell to construct an internal representation of space, and to use that representation to help it understand its own location, was thrilling. After that talk, the entorhinal cortex became Lisa’s focus. Working on this project, she found that there are biophysical properties of the entorhinal cortex that could contribute to the coding features of grid cells. Additionally, she implemented a computational model for how that might work.
Still captivated by the entorhinal cortex, Lisa went on to pursue a postdoc with the very same scientists who first introduced her to the grid cell, and joined the Moser group in Norway. She was able to combine her interest in computational modeling with her experimental skills, becoming one of the first people in the Moser lab to record grid cells in mice. She tested predictions of the grid cell model she developed in graduate school, examining the effects of ion channels on grid cell coding properties. Though the model turned out to be more complex than she had originally thought, she recalls this actually being a good thing. Some of her initial predictions were incorrect, but this became a driving force in moving the model forward to one that was more complete and accurate.
Much like her experience in the Hasselmo lab, Lisa enjoyed her time in the Moser group. She was excited about the science she was doing, and was surrounded by great people and kind mentors. During her postdoc, she received a piece of advice that stuck with her from Dr. May-Britt Moser, which was to let curiosity drive her science. No matter what stage you are at in your academic career, there will always be ups and downs. “At the end of the day, you have to find inspiration in the questions you’re trying to address.”
She carried this philosophy through to her own lab at Stanford. She started out by exploring questions that she had been wanting to answer for a long time, such as how ion channels contribute to encoding and behavior in the entorhinal cortex. As the lab grew, so did the repertoire of questions. They now explore how experience may influence or control our internal spatial mapping system, and how changes in that system can influence memory. Although Lisa may not describe herself as a “card-carrying computational neuroscientist,” the lab does a considerable amount of computational work, both within the lab and collaboratively. Since starting her lab in 2013, Lisa has contributed countless insights about grid cell biophysical properties, their error correction mechanisms, and their connectivity with place cells, establishing herself at the forefront of the field of spatial memory and navigation.
When she was a new PI, Lisa recalls the difficulties of navigating some unspoken parts of her new role, particularly as a mother of two young children. She often felt torn between her family and her field, particularly as a pre-tenure PI. Traveling and participating in conferences with a baby at home was difficult, and she notes that she didn’t receive formal training for how to navigate this aspect of her field. In fact, there were many additional challenges for which she had to find her own solutions, ranging from writing grants to teaching to mentoring. And while these aspects of her career have been challenging, her attitude is overwhelmingly positive. She describes herself as wearing rose-colored glasses, managing to find the good in these difficulties, no matter how strenuous. She cites her colleagues and senior mentors, who have offered flexibility and advice, as major sources of support.
Though once a source of uncertainty, Lisa now finds mentoring a particularly rewarding aspect of being a PI. She encourages her trainees’ excitement and draws inspiration from their progress and ideas. One of the most exhilarating parts of science often comes with new discoveries, when “for a short period of time, you might be the only person on the planet who knows this fact.” Though she misses collecting data (especially slice physiology), she enjoys being a mentor, and leading a community of scientists doing exciting work. This work has posed her as a leader in her field and, like the scientists she looked up to as a child, a role model.
Find out more about the breakthrough research being conducted in Lisa’s lab here.
Check out Nancy’s full interview with Lisa on February 14th, 2020 below or wherever you get your podcasts!
