Paola Arlotta

Biosketch

Dr. Paola Arlotta is the Golub Family Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University. She is a principal investigator at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, and an Associate member of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. She serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of many Academic and Private Institutions, nationally and internationally.

Dr. Arlotta received her M.S. in biochemistry from the University of Trieste, Italy, and her Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of Portsmouth, UK. She subsequently completed her postdoctoral training in neuroscience at Harvard Medical School. She has won numerous awards including the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Award, the George Ledlie Prize, the Fannie Cox Prize, the Gutenberg Award, the Pradel Award, the Elena Leucrezia Cornaro Piscopia International Prize, the Feltrinelli International Prize, and the ISSCR Momentum Award, among many others. Her research is published and widely cited in many noteworthy journals including Nature, Science, and Cell, as well as in the popular press. She is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the Accademia dei Lincei, and the National Academy of Sciences.

Research Interests

The function of the brain relies on the integration into functional circuits of an outstanding diversity of cell types. Generation and maintenance of cell diversity, correct wiring into neural circuits, and orchestrated interaction of neurons and glia are critical, and when disrupted, lead to neurological disease. Focusing on the developing cerebral cortex, my lab has discovered some of the first molecular programs controlling the fate specification of cortical excitatory neuron classes and shown that cell identity can be reprogrammed from within the developing brain, even in permanently postmitotic neurons. We have shown that proper establishment of pyramidal neuron diversity is critical to guide major developmental decisions such as the establishment of cell type-specific connectivity with inhibitory neurons, the emergence of unique patterns of myelination along the axons of different neuron classes, and the layer-specific positioning of microglia within cortical circuits. This work in the mouse embryo has motivated our more recent exploration of the mechanisms that drive healthy and pathological development of the human cerebral cortex. We have generated stem cell-derived human cortical organoids of unprecedented complexity and reproducibility, and gained fundamental new understanding of previously inaccessible mechanisms of human brain formation and of poorly understood neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric diseases.