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Home > Prizes > Prize Recipients > Polina Anikeeva

Polina Anikeeva

2018 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science

Location

Cambridge, MA

Title

Associate professor in materials science and engineering, and associate director of the Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Area(s) of Research

Materials science; neurobiology; bioengineering

Education

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (PhD)

Country of Birth

Russia

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Links to learn more about Polina Anikeeva's work
  • mit.edu

Tags
bioengineering biology biomaterials biomedical science biophysics biotechnology chemistry electronics magnets MIT nanotechnology neurology photonic materials russia women in science women in stem
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Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, to mechanical engineers, Polina Anikeeva was exposed to science at a young age. But it was at a summer research course in New York where she got a taste for molecular biology and American academia, setting her down a path toward brilliant biomedical breakthroughs.

The U.S. seemed like a magical place, where anything was possible.

Anikeeva enrolled in doctoral work at MIT, where she studied optoelectronics — developing a class of light-emitting devices, based on nanomaterials, used in displays. Her designs were licensed by a company that supplied optical parts to television manufacturers, which has since been acquired by Samsung.

Polina Anikeeva working with magnetic nanoparticles in her lab at MIT

But Anikeeva yearned for fresh challenges. “Rather than improving devices, I wanted to create them,” she says.

During a postdoctoral stint, Anikeeva fashioned implants that allowed neuroscientists to stimulate neurons with light and record their activity in freely moving, rather than sedated, animals — a major technical coup. She soon realized, however, that the implants were cumbersome and, made of metal and glass, had limited compatibility with the comparably elastic nervous system.

Polina Anikeeva with probes created from flexible, hair-thin polymer fibers that she developed.

So she built implantable probes from flexible, hair-thin polymer fibers that approximate the brain’s mechanical properties and account for its diverse signaling functions. Two years later she repeated the feat with stretchable, resilient fibers, paving the way for sophisticated studies of spinal cord injury and recovery.

Building on those findings, Anikeeva developed a system of wireless deep brain stimulation: one that harnesses the ability of a magnetic field to elicit the firing of brain cells in mice. The system represents a noninvasive prototype that could help researchers unravel the neuronal underpinnings of brain disorders and someday help treat recalcitrant psychiatric and neurological diseases like Parkinson’s disease — without the bulky electrodes currently employed.

 

Awards and Accomplishments

  • Sanofi Biomedical Innovation Award
  • NSF CAREER Award
  • DARPA Young Faculty Award
  • Dresselhaus Fund Award

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bioengineering biology biomaterials biomedical science biophysics biotechnology chemistry electronics magnets MIT nanotechnology neurology photonic materials russia women in science women in stem

Jury Members

2018 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science

Iannis Aifantis

Professor and Chair of the Department of Pathology, New York University School of Medicine

Heran Darwin

Professor of Microbiology, New York University School of Medicine

Laurie Dempsey

Senior Editor, Nature Immunology, Nature Publishing Group

Yibin Kang

Warner-Lambert Parke-Davis Professor of Molecular Biology, Princeton University

Peter Palese

Horace W. Goldsmith Professor and Chair of Microbiology, Professor of Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Leslie Vosshall

Robin Chemers Neustein Professor, The Rockefeller University

Jedd Wolchok

Lloyd J. Old Chair for Clinical Investigation, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
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Jeanne T. Paz

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