Susanna Mierau Postdoctoral researcher at Boston Children’s Hospital, Massachusetts, and neurologist, MGH Lurie Center for Autism
Please describe your career since you left Balliol After finishing my DPhil in neuroscience in the Physiology Department at Oxford, I began my medical studies at Harvard. I completed my medical internship in Wichita, Kansas, where I grew up, at the University of Kansas School of Medicine and my neurology residency back in Boston at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. For the last two years, I have combined my neuroscience and neurology backgrounds, as a postdoctoral researcher at Boston Children’s Hospital investigating the neurobiological basis of autism, and as a neurologist at the MGH speciality clinic for children and adults with autism.
What does your current position involve and what do you enjoy about it? I spend most of my time in the laboratory studying the neurobiology of autism and related disorders that affect brain development. More specifically, I investigate how the mutation identified in Rett syndrome, a disorder with autistic features,
alters the connections between neurons in the developing brain. Using techniques I learned as a DPhil student, I am able to record electrical activity from living brain cells. I also teach neuroanatomy and a course entitled the ‘Neurobiology of Disease’ at the medical school. Two days per month, I see children and adults with autism at the MGH specialty clinic. I am fascinated by how we learn and how this process occurs on the cellular level. My job allows me not only to explore fundamental scientific questions about brain function but also to apply that knowledge to address neurological disorders. This is both enjoyable and challenging. Working directly with patients and families, I am able to help them understand and cope with the symptoms; however, we currently do not have any treatments that will ‘cure’ or reverse the regression of social, language or cognitive skills that occurs in some of these disorders. I am hopeful that the translational research we work on in the laboratory will eventually lead to new drug therapies.
What do you love about where you live? Boston is an incredibly exciting hub for neuroscience research and neurological clinical care. I deeply appreciate the opportunities I have had to train here (I was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before I went to Oxford) and to work with wonderful colleagues. I live on the Harvard undergraduate campus as an academic adviser at one of the 12 residential communities. The ‘house’ system at Harvard was modelled, in part, on the Oxbridge colleges. Here 400 students live together with 24 graduate students (or young professionals like me) and the Masters (two faculty members). Eating together in the dining hall with students and faculty members from so many different academic fields reminds me fondly of times at Balliol and Holywell Manor.
There is a rich calendar of intellectual (and not so intellectual!) events in the JCR and SCR. Although it is only 10 minutes by subway from the hubbub of Boston’s city centre, Cambridge (Massachusetts), around the Harvard campus, offers a leafy green oasis with many cultural and culinary options. In summer, I enjoy sailing on the Charles River (above) from the boathouse at MIT, my alma mater. In winter, I am particularly fond of the Museum of Fine Arts, the Boston Ballet and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Is there anything you miss about the UK? There is something so truly special about the intellectual community at Oxford. The friendships I formed at Balliol, and in the wider University, continue to grow and enrich my life. At Oxford, it always felt as if there were more time for engaging with one another, and the college system structurally facilitated that by bringing people from many different fields and backgrounds together for daily discussion over dinner or other formal (or informal) events. I returned to the UK in my final year of medical school to do a clinical rotation at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in Queen Square in London. I was so impressed by the collegiality and high level of clinical specialty care that I could see an ideal career working (and living) in Oxford as a researcher and serving as a neurology consultant at Queen Square.
Would you recommend life in North America? Yes! There are so many opportunities in the US and Canada. Here in Boston, there is a vibrant intellectual and cultural scene and all that big city life has to offer. I am also particularly fond of my home in Wichita, where the pace of life is less pressured, leaving more time to enjoy activities with family and friends. i s s u e n o . 2 0 J UNE 2 0 1 4
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