Dr. Helen Schwerdt
Assistant Professor University of Pittsburgh
Postdoctoral Fellow Massachusetts Institute of Technology
PhD in Electrical Engineering Arizona State University
From a young age, Dr. Helen Schwerdt was fascinated by the idea that our brains underlie who we are as individuals. However, Helen felt that she did not have the skillset appropriate to study the brain; she felt more at home in a computer engineering class than a psychology class. Ultimately, however, she found a way to combine her academic strengths in computers and engineering with her love for the brain and its complexity. Today, Helen is an Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh, where her lab develops and applies new tools to study neurochemical signaling in learning and disease.
As an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University, Helen was studying biomedical engineering and intending to go to medical school. Then, a conversation with a friend set her life on a new path. Her friend was working in a neuroscience lab as part of an undergraduate research program at Harvard. Helen listened rapt with interest as her friend described brains laid out in dishes, and how she was trying to understand the neural connections within them. Inspired, Helen applied to work in a lab at Johns Hopkins building wireless interfaces to record neural activity. Not only did the experience show her how fun research could be, but it also gave her a glimpse of how engineering and neuroscience could intersect.
Enamored with research and no longer considering medical school, Helen chose to do a PhD in electrical engineering at Arizona State University. While she was still interested in neuroscience, she wanted to learn more engineering fundamentals that she could apply to the brain in the future. She was specifically interested in microfabrication: the process of making objects in the micrometer to millimeter range. For her thesis project, Helen built a small device for measuring neural activity. The device was not only wireless, but also completely without a power source. This was made possible by the passive process of “backscattering”, which resulted from sending irradiating microwave signals to combine with neural signals at the receiver chip. The fact that there were no wires would reduce the chance of infection, and the lack of heat from a power source would limit damage to surrounding neural tissue. After building this device, Helen was able to show that it worked by recording neural signals from the sciatic nerve of a frog. This technology is not limited to recordings; many labs now often use a similar powerless device for stimulating neural activity. While Helen found her graduate school experience rewarding, as it came to an end, she knew that she wanted to move closer to biology. She wanted to design tools that might one day be used in a clinical setting to help patients.
With this goal in mind, Helen chose to do her postdoctoral work as part of a collaborative project among Drs. Michael Cima, Ann Graybiel, and Robert Langer at MIT. The Graybiel lab worked with monkeys, and Helen knew that monkey work was a crucial step towards making tools that might have a future use in humans. The collaboration focused on two key objectives: to design tools that deliver drugs to precise regions in the brain, and to measure neurochemicals in deep brain structures. Helen’s role lay in the neurochemical sensing part of this project. She aimed to measure dopamine release in the monkey brain in real time during behavior, which would further illuminate the role of this neurotransmitter in brain function. She began making and testing devices in rats before moving to monkeys, and was frustrated when the devices didn’t seem to be working. Ultimately, Helen realized that there was too much of an inflammatory reaction from implanting the device, which prevented it from properly sensing dopamine. It was here that her background in microfabrication was particularly useful, and she was able to develop a much smaller device that evaded the inflammation issue. After using it successfully in rats, Helen was eventually able to adapt it for use in monkeys.
The device that Helen created relies on fast scan cyclic voltammetry. It converts neurochemicals into electric signals by using a reduction-oxidation, or “redox”, reaction. For instance, when certain voltages are applied to dopamine, dopamine will oxidize or reduce, generating an electrical current (dopamine’s “redox potential”). Importantly, the amount of voltage needed to generate this redox potential is different for different neurotransmitters. So, in theory, this device could be used to measure and differentiate multiple electroactive molecules, thus furthering our understanding of how multiple neurotransmitter systems interact during behavior. This is something that Helen is now working towards in her own lab.
As she searched for a home for the Schwerdt Lab, Helen knew that she wanted to find a place that had the same collaborative spirit she had experienced working in the Graybiel Lab. After all, the brain is so complex that solving its many mysteries necessitates interdisciplinary work. Ultimately, Helen was drawn to the University of Pittsburgh. Not only did Pitt have a large and welcoming neuroscience community, but there was also a significant non-human primate research core that Helen was excited to collaborate with.
In her lab, Helen is continuing to build on the tool she developed as a postdoc. She hopes to optimize it to more efficiently distinguish between different neurochemicals. She is primarily working on these tools in the context of studying the neural process of learning, which requires the integration of information from multiple brain regions. With her tools, Helen hopes to someday be able to measure multiple neurotransmitters in multiple brain regions simultaneously. She would then combine these data with neural activity data to better understand the underpinnings of neural plasticity as it relates to learning. Additionally, her extensive experience working with dopamine has prompted an interest in Parkinson’s disease, which is known to be caused by degeneration of dopamine-producing neurons. Helen plans to use her tools in a monkey model of Parkinson’s to better understand how loss of dopamine affects other aspects of brain signaling.
Looking back on her journey, Helen appreciates the support she had from her mentors and is now learning to be a similar source of support for her own trainees. Remembering some of the frustrating experimental failures she faced, she wants to be able to sit down with her trainees when they encounter similar issues and make sure they have the resources they need to overcome these obstacles. Undoubtedly, her trainees will find inspiration in Helen and in the innovation she has shown, not only in the groundbreaking tools she has created thus far, but also in the exciting interdisciplinary career she has forged for herself.
Find out more about Helen and her lab’s research here.
Listen to Chiaki’s full interview with Helen on November 30, 2022 below!
