Sheila Nirenberg is an American

neuroscientist A neuroscientist (or neurobiologist) is a scientist who has specialised knowledge in neuroscience, a branch of biology that deals with the physiology, biochemistry, psychology, anatomy and molecular biology of neurons, neural circuits, and glial ...

and professor at

Weill Cornell Medical College The Joan & Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University is Cornell University's biomedical research unit and medical school located in Upper East Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York. Weill Cornell Medicine is affiliated with N ...

. She works in the field of

neural coding Neural coding (or Neural representation) is a neuroscience field concerned with characterising the hypothetical relationship between the stimulus and the individual or ensemble neuronal responses and the relationship among the electrical activit ...

, developing new kinds of prosthetic devices that can communicate directly with the brain, and new kinds of smart robots. She is a recipient of a MacArthur “genius” award and has been the subject of, or featured in, several documentaries for her technology for treating blindness. She is currently the Nanette Laitman Professor in Neurology and Neuroscience and a professor of Computational Neuroscience in the Institute for Computational Biomedicine at the

Weill Medical College The Joan & Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University is Cornell University's biomedical research unit and medical school located in Upper East Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York. Weill Cornell Medicine is affiliated with NewY ...

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

. Additionally, she is the founder of two startup companies, Bionic Sight LLC (prosthetic devices) and Nirenberg Neuroscience LLC (smart robots, AI).

Early life and education

Nirenberg grew up in Westchester, New York, United States. She obtained her bachelor's degree from the

State University of New York at Albany The State University of New York at Albany, commonly referred to as the University at Albany, UAlbany or SUNY Albany, is a public research university with campuses in Albany, Rensselaer, and Guilderland, New York. Founded in 1844, it is one ...

and her doctorate from

Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is consi ...

. She worked with Constance Cepko, a neurobiologist who was studying development and degeneration of the vertebrate retina. Nirenberg's project focused on developing a new technique to eliminate specific interneuron cell types in order to understand fundamentally how neural circuits work.

Research career

Nirenberg stayed at Harvard University for her postdoctoral work, working in computational neuroscience, then joined the faculty in the Department of Neurobiology at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California S ...

(UCLA). She was then recruited to Cornell Medical School (Weill Cornell Medicine), where she is now a full professor A few years later, she was able to decipher the

retina The retina (from la, rete "net") is the innermost, light-sensitive layer of tissue of the eye of most vertebrates and some molluscs. The optics of the eye create a focused two-dimensional image of the visual world on the retina, which then ...

's neural code This discovery allowed her to develop a new treatment for

blindness Visual impairment, also known as vision impairment, is a medical definition primarily measured based on an individual's better eye visual acuity; in the absence of treatment such as correctable eyewear, assistive devices, and medical treatment� ...

. The treatment bypasses damaged retinal cells and directly communicates visual information through the

optic nerve In neuroanatomy, the optic nerve, also known as the second cranial nerve, cranial nerve II, or simply CN II, is a paired cranial nerve that transmits visual information from the retina to the brain. In humans, the optic nerve is derived fro ...

to the brain. Nirenberg has published her research in journals such as ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...

'', '' PNAS'', ''

Neuron A neuron, neurone, or nerve cell is an electrically excitable cell that communicates with other cells via specialized connections called synapses. The neuron is the main component of nervous tissue in all animals except sponges and placozoa. ...

'', and '' PLoS One''. Her company, Bionic Sight, LLC (https://www.bionicsightllc.com/) is currently running a clinical trial to bring the treatment forward to blind patients (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT04278131).

Awards and honors

* Bressler Prize, 2022 for Outstanding Accomplishments in Vision Science * Barbara McClintock Women Innovator Award, 2022 * Crain's Notable Women in Tech, 2019 * MacArthur Award, 2013 *

Beckman Young Investigators Award The Beckman Young Investigators Award was established by Mabel and Arnold Beckman in 1991, and is now administered by the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation. The Beckman Young Investigator (BYI) Program is intended to provide research support to p ...

* Klingenstein Fellowship, 1998 * Frontiers of Science Award * Stein Oppenheimer Award

References

External links

Nirenberg Lab Website

Bionic Sight
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nirenberg, Sheila American neuroscientists American women neuroscientists Weill Medical College of Cornell University faculty University at Albany, SUNY alumni Harvard Medical School alumni Living people Year of birth missing (living people) MacArthur Fellows American women academics 21st-century American women