As a child, Smita Saxena was fascinated by electrical circuits. In her spare time, she would open the backs of electrical gadgets that lay around the house to study how they worked. Today, fueled in part by her childhood curiosity, Saxena studies neuronal circuits inside the human brain as an established neuroscientist at the University of Missouri.
Saxena joined MU’s NextGen Precision Health team in early December 2023, relocating from Switzerland where she had worked in the Department of Neurology and Department for Biomedical Research at the University of Bern. Her neuroscience lab, which will be on the fourth floor of the NextGen building, will start research on fighting neurodegenerative diseases in late February.
Published widely in prestigious journals such as Neuron and Nature Neuroscience, Saxena’s research focuses on understanding the innermost workings of diseases such as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, Spinocerebellar ataxias and dementia. Scientists know relatively little about these diseases, which start in the brain and can be affected by several factors.
“We know that neurodegenerative disease is increasing because people are living to be older,” Saxena said. “The burden for diseases like dementia is high. There’s a genetic component, a susceptibility component, a person’s lifestyle and environment, which are all factors that influence how neurodegeneration functions. It’s important to me to get to the bottom of these conditions to improve people’s lives and, one day, be able to cure these diseases altogether.”