Myriam Heiman named director of The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory

Myriam Heiman, the John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Neuroscience at MIT, will become the director of MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, effective July 1. She succeeds Picower Professor Li-Huei Tsai, who is stepping down after leading the institute for 16 years.Heiman, a molecular neurobiologist and geneticist, studies the neurodegenerative diseases of the brain’s basal ganglia, including Huntington’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. Using cutting-edge techniques, including single-cell genomics and a powerful transcriptomic technique she helped invent, called translating ribosome affinity purification, she aims to understand the molecular changes that eventually lead to cell death in these diseases. “Myriam is an extraordinary scientist, a proven leader within MIT, and a deeply caring and generous mentor. Her research to determine why specific brain cell types are particularly vulnerable to diseases such as Huntington’s has produced studies that are both deep in their insight and sweeping in their scope,” says Nergis Mavalvala, dean of the MIT School of Science and the Curtis and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics. “I firmly believe that Myriam will be an excellent leader during the Picower Institute’s next chapter.”“I am honored to take on this role to support the institute’s exceptional scientists and trainees as they pursue discoveries that deepen our understanding of the brain and improve human health,” says Heiman, a professor in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS). The Picower Institute is a community of 16 neuroscience labs dedicated to understanding the mechanisms that drive learning and memory and related functions such as cognition, emotion, perception, behavior, and consciousness. Institute neuroscientists explore the brain and nervous system at multiple scales, from genes and molecules to cells and synapses to circuits and systems, producing novel insights into how disruptions in these mechanisms can lead to developmental, psychiatric, or neurodegenerative disease. Picower Professor Susumu Tonegawa founded the institute as a center in 1994 before a transformative gift from Barbara and Jeffry Picower enabled it to become an institute in 2002. Li-Huei Tsai has served as director since 2009, but announced in March that she would step down after more than 16 years to focus on her research.Heiman joined the Picower Institute, BCS, and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT in 2011, after completing her postdoctoral training at The Rockefeller University. She holds a PhD from Johns Hopkins University and a BA from Princeton University. “Ever since joining the institute, Heiman’s research has been guided by the principle that fundamental understanding can lead to breakthroughs in addressing disease,” Tsai says. “Myriam has made it her mission to address these kinds of urgent questions in neuroscience.”Heiman employs sophisticated DNA and RNA analysis technologies to gain detailed insights into how brain cell states change amid disease, revealing molecular pathways that contribute to the particular vulnerability of different cell types. In 2020, Heiman published the results of an innovative in vivo screening of every mouse gene’s impact on the survival of neurons in the brain, identifying hundreds necessary for sustaining neurons and highlighting a specific gene that promoted their resilience in the context of Huntington’s disease. Other studies, both in mice and in postmortem human brain samples, have revealed errant immune responses in neurons and in the brain’s blood vessels that contribute to the disease’s progression. The latter finding arose in a 2022 paper, published with MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory colleague Manolis Kellis, that also provided the field one of the first cellular atlases of the brain’s vasculature.  Her research has also produced insights into other neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders, including ALS and frontotemporal dementia. In 2024, together with Kellis, Heiman published a paper in Cell showing the diseases have remarkable overlaps at the cellular and molecular levels, revealing potential targets that could yield therapies applicable to both disorders. Heiman’s latest research is also producing new insights into substance use disorders and schizophrenia.Her research program has garnered many awards. In 2021, Heiman became co-recipient of a National Institutes of Health Transformative Research Award, which “promotes cross-cutting, interdisciplinary approaches that could potentially create or challenge existing paradigms” as part of the NIH’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research program. The next year she also received a prestigious NIH R35 grant to find early triggers of disease progression.Heiman is also a dedicated teacher and mentor. In 2017, she earned the Department of BCS award for excellence in graduate mentoring; and in 2020, she received the department’s award for excellence in undergraduate teaching. In 2024, she was named one of 23 faculty across MIT who are “committed to caring” — an award given out by MIT’s Office of Graduate Education to faculty members who have served as exceptional mentors to graduate students.Beyond MIT, Heiman serves on editorial boards and the scientific advisory board of the nonprofit Huntington’s Disease Foundation, an organization that supports research aimed at finding treatments and a cure for Huntington’s and related disorders.. Heiman says she is looking forward to her new role in service to MIT by leading the Picower Institute.“I approach this role with humility and enormous enthusiasm,” Heiman says. “The Picower Institute has an extraordinary legacy, and I’m eager to do everything I can to help support the next generation of transformative research.”