March 11, 2026
Picower Professor Li-Huei Tsai, who has led The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory since 2009, will step down from the role of director at the end of the academic year in May. Her decision frees her to focus exclusively on her academic work, including her continued leadership of MIT’s Aging Brain Initiative and the Alana Down Syndrome Center. Meanwhile, the search for The Picower Institute’s next director has begun.
“During her exceptional 16-year tenure in the role of director, Li-Huei has led substantial growth at The Picower Institute,” says Nergis Mavalvala, Dean of the School of Science and Curtis and Kathleen Marble professor of astrophysics. “She has markedly expanded the faculty—eight of the current 16 labs joined Picower under her directorship—through successful recruitment of highly talented neuroscientists. She has done this, and more, all while leading one of our most productive and influential labs, working on a quintessentially grand challenge in human health: combatting Alzheimer’s disease.”
To conduct the search for a new Picower Institute director, Mavalvala has appointed a committee led by Sherman Fairchild Professor Matthew Wilson, associate director of the institute. Serving with Wilson are Picower Professor and former institute director Mark Bear, Menicon Professor Troy Littleton, Assistant Professor Sara Prescott, and Professor Fan Wang. They will identify and interview candidates, producing a report to Mavalvala later this spring.
Growing an institute
Tsai, a professor in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and a member of The Broad Institute, says she is grateful to have had the opportunity to build The Picower Institute into a preeminent center for neuroscience research.
“I’m immensely proud of what our Institute represents: world-renowned neuroscience research that is creative, rigorous, novel and impactful,” Tsai says. “Our labs produce innovations, discoveries and often translational strategies that have broken new ground and pushed science, medicine and technology forward. We also provide excellent training that has enabled us to launch the careers of many of the field’s new and future leaders. It has been a tremendous honor to be able to build on the incredible foundation and inspiration provided by my predecessors Susumu Tonegawa and Mark Bear to enable the institute’s growth and success.”
Founded by Tonegawa as the Center for Learning and Memory in 1994 and then renamed The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory after a transformative gift by Barbara and Jeffry Picower in 2002, the institute now comprises about 400 scientists, students and staff across 16 labs in MIT’s Buildings 46 and 68.
But when Tsai became director in July 2009, just three years after coming to MIT from Harvard Medical School, The Picower Institute was a smaller enterprise of 11 labs and a community closer to 200 members. Over the ensuing years, Tsai worked closely with the Picowers’ foundation, formerly the JPB Foundation and now the Freedom Together Foundation, to develop several strategic initiatives to accelerate growth and enhance research productivity. These have included programs specifically designed to support junior faculty, to catalyze more applications for more private grant funding, and to sustain fellowships for more than 18 postdocs and graduate students. Working with the foundation, she has also expanded the scope of research support provided by the Picower Institute Innovation Fund begun under Bear.
Eager to galvanize colleagues across MIT in fighting neurodegenerative diseases and neurological disorders affecting cognition, Tsai also built and launched two campuswide initiatives: The Aging Brain Initiative, founded in 2015 and sustained by a broad collation of donors, and the Alana Down Syndrome Center, established in 2019 with a gift from The Alana Foundation.
Research focus
As The Picower Institute has grown, Tsai’s research has, too. In work spanning molecular, cellular, circuit and network scales in the brain, Tsai has led numerous highly cited discoveries about the neurobiology of Alzheimer’s disease and has translated several of these insights into specific therapeutic strategies, including one now undergoing a national phase III clinical trial. In all, she has published more than 230 peer-reviewed neuroscience studies, generated numerous patents and helped launch several startups. She has been named a fellow of the National Academy of Medicine, The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Inventors and received awards including the Society for Neuroscience Mika Salpeter Lifetime Achievement Award and The Hans Wigzell Prize.
Tsai’s earliest discoveries identified key roles in neurodegeneration for the enzyme CDK5. She has pioneered understanding of how epigenetic changes in brain cells affect Alzheimer’s pathology and memory. Her work has also highlighted a critical role for DNA double-strand breaks in disease.
In more recent work, Tsai’s lab has conducted several studies using innovative human stem-cell-based cultures to advance understanding of how the biggest genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s (a gene variant called APOE4), contributes to pathology and how some existing medications and supplements might help. In collaboration with MIT Computer Science Professor Manolis Kellis and Rush University Professor David Bennett, she has also published several sweeping atlases documenting how gene expression and epigenetics differ in Alzheimer’s disease. These studies have provided the field with troves of new data and have yielded new insights into what makes the brain vulnerable to disease, and what helps some people remain resilient.
Tsai has also led a collaboration with Professors Emery N. Brown and Edward S. Boyden that’s discovered a potential non-invasive, device-based treatment for Alzheimer’s and possibly other neurological disorders. Called “Gamma Entrainment Using Sensory Stimuli” (GENUS), the technology stimulates the senses (vision, hearing or touch) to increase the power and synchrony of 40Hz frequency “gamma” waves in the brain. Numerous studies involving either lab animals or human volunteers by her group and others, have shown that the approach can preserve brain volume and learning and memory and reduce signs of Alzheimer’s pathology. Via an MIT-spinoff company, the technology has now advanced to pivotal clinical trial enrolling hundreds of people around the country.
“After 16 years leading The Picower Institute, I’m now eager to sharpen my focus on advancing human health through the work in my lab, the Aging Brain Initiative and the Alana Center,” Tsai says.
