Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

Whether you’re a Baltimore native or coming to Johns Hopkins for the first time, you’ll find the Hopkins Neuroscience department is a place we come to call home. Our faculty and staff are committed to discovery, innovation and cutting edge insights. And we want to support you every step of the way.

Check out what some of our students and faculty have to say about their experience in our labs.

I’m a neuroscience PhD student. I’ve always been interested in different aspects of humanity, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, all the things that center around thought, human experience, the way that you experience the world, not just externally but internally. Neuroscience for me is a manifestation of that passion, that drive. So, to be able to study the different mechanisms by which the brain forms and functions is like studying a work of art. It’s something I quite enjoy. 

They say, “Find something you love, and then find someone to pay you to do it.” For me, that’s what science is. It's something that, even if I wasn’t being paid, I would be inclined towards and something that I would have as a hobby at the very least. To be able to do what is essentially a hobby as a full-time job is perfect for me. I don’t see any other path for myself other than academic research or some other facet of science that will afford me the intellectual freedom to learn, explore, and discover for the rest of my life.  

I'm passionate about development, particularly neurodevelopment. Historically, I’ve worked in the autism-schizophrenia field, and I think those are very important questions that I quite like studying, especially due to the human aspect of it, that you have an aspect of neurodiversity there. Not only are you teaching the scientific community about different aspects of brain development, but also, I can be an advocate for the people who are neurodiverse, and I can work to change the narrative and promote social acceptance. 

Right now, I work in the auditory field, looking at auditory development. And that connects together because in a lot of cases you have communication disorders, you have developmental delay, you have hearing disabilities associated with these neurodevelopmental conditions. And I’m working at the juncture between those. I can see myself working in that area for quite some time, in the space of neurodevelopment around the juncture of autism and schizophrenia, as well as hearing and communication disorders. 

I study neuronal regeneration in the Linden lab. Specifically, we are investigating the innate regenerative properties of serotonin neurons with fixed tissue and in vivo imaging as well as cell-specific genetic profiling. We hope this will offer insights into the mechanism by which serotonin neurons recover after injury.  The insights could potentially be applied to other neuronal cell types which otherwise do not recover following injury. 

When I first came to Johns Hopkins for my postdoctoral fellowship to study neuronal regeneration in the Linden lab, I was immediately struck by the community's overwhelming openness to collaboration and resource sharing as we worked on the chemical and neurobiological aspects of brain function. Our lab is investigating the innate regenerative properties of serotonin neurons to glean insights into how serotonin neurons recover after injury. By extension, we hope our findings are applicable to other neuronal cell types which otherwise do not recover following injury. 

I have been fortunate to be trained by senior scientists in a variety of techniques. I have access to top-of-the-line equipment within departmental core facilities and other laboratories to further my research using the best possible tools. And I have shared and received multiple mouse lines. The enthusiasm with which faculty and researchers share tools, supplies, and knowledge is not only motivating, but truly refreshing. 

I am currently pursuing my PhD in neuroscience at Johns Hopkins. What I like most about it is the diversity of the field. It isn’t just neurons and circuits and brain regions, it’s how you interact with the world, how you interact with people. It’s about connection, and it’s a beautiful, wonderful thing. Yet neuroscience also is very fickle; for example, a small mutation in a random gene can cause a devastating disease. I just find it fascinating on the whole.  

My passion for neuroscience stems from a very personal story. I have an inherited neurological disease called Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, CMT for short. It is an inherited peripheral neuropathy that is a very slow, degenerative disease. Over the course of my life, it has become increasingly more difficult to walk and stand and be mobile. That is just something that is going to continue for the rest of my life, but it is not a life-threatening condition. So, I can continue to do work like this, and a lot of my research previous to coming to Hopkins was on CMT. In my PhD thesis work, I’m gaining skills that I think will be very helpful for a future career in a lab where I can study the disease even more. That personal connection is a huge source of passion, and it’s something that I want to understand fully because it’s a part of me. I want to study the mechanisms of disease, and I don't think I could go into therapeutic development, as that would be a little bit too close to home. But understanding the disease is a great first step. 

My lab studies how experiences leave a lasting trace in the brain, the cellular and molecular changes that happen at synapses to create memories.  My journey in this line of research started because I was interested in understanding how memories are formed in the brain, and that’s why I became a neuroscientist. I was training as a biologist when I was doing my undergraduate work in Korea. Back then I was interested in molecular genetics, and I was thinking about being a molecular biologist or something to do with molecular genetics. Then I had an opportunity to go to Brown as an undergraduate exchange student for one year, and that's where I bumped into neuroscience. Brown had one of the first, I believe, undergraduate neuroscience programs. So, I was enrolled in the intro to neuroscience course, Neuro 001, and I was sitting in the front row, like I normally do, in this gigantic auditorium with 400 students, a huge class. Then my PhD mentor to-be Mark Bear was giving a lecture about memory, and that’s when I realized, that’s it. I want to do this because they can study how memories are formed in a biological way, and that really caught my attention. I fell in love with the idea that I can study these things and be a biologist. My journey started there.