Contact

Ed Boyden, Ph.D.
Y. Eva Tan Professor in Neurotechnology at MIT
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
McGovern Institute
Professor, Departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Media Arts and Sciences, and Biological Engineering
Co-Director, MIT Center for Neurobiological Engineering
Member, MIT Center for Environmental Health Sciences, Computational and Systems Biology Initiative, and Koch Institute
Leader, Synthetic Neurobiology Group
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Ave., Room 46-2171C, Cambridge, MA 02139
email - [email protected]
phone - (617) 324-3085
web - http://synthneuro.org


Directions to the lab

Here is a map to our group's headquarters, in the MIT McGovern Institute. It is on Main Street, west of the Kendall T-stop on the MBTA red line. Enter the Brain and Cognitive Sciences building from the McGovern Institute entrance on Main Street, then take the elevator or stairs to the 2nd floor, and follow the signs to 46-2171C.

Here are directions to the MIT campus by private or public transportation, as well as the locations of parking locations on campus. Metered parking is available in front of the building. Please schedule meetings in advance by emailing Ed Boyden at [email protected].

Neurotechnology training program

We welcome visitors to our lab to learn how to apply our neurotechnologies to scientific and biological questions. Visitors typically stay for ~1-2 day periods, observing us perform experimental procedures (tissue processing, optics, physiology, etc.) that we are performing on those days, appropriate to the interest of the visitor. Visitors are responsible for their own travel and lodging expenses. If you are interested in arranging such a visit, please email Ed Boyden at [email protected] with (1) a paragraph of background skills and training (so that we can tune training appropriately; a certain amount of background knowledge and experience is essential for advanced training to be practical), and (2) a paragraph describing the project you are doing and what kinds of training you are interested in (so that we can schedule your visit and appointments appropriately), with the email subject line beginning with "[neurotech-training]". It is very important to be very specific about what you want to learn; we cannot accomodate general lab tours. It is also important that you have enough background in the area, that a 1-2 day visit will meaningfully impact your research. We will try to accomodate all appropriate requests.

How to collaborate or partner with us

We freely distribute all of the technologies we invent, to the maximum extent possible. We and our partners have distributed our tools to thousands of researchers since we began work at MIT in 2006. For researchers in non-profit groups, we can send you tools directly and rapidly; we partner with many other non-profit institutions to distribute our tools. We also have a large number of collaborators in industry. See our Resources web page for more information. Write to Ed Boyden at [email protected] to learn more.

We are always eager to hear from groups interested in applying our technologies to problems, or who want to work on problems together. Several startup companies have been launched by lab members as well.

We partner with many philanthropists, foundations, and non-profit institutions as well, to work on creating new neurotechnologies or answering scientific questions; in fact, this is a prime way that we help broadly positively impact science and medicine.

We have also created an MIT fund to which you can directly donate, to support invention and application of new technologies towards the development of systematic new brain analyses and strategies for approaching neural disorders. Here is the donation site to support our research via the MIT giving web page; look for the category "Neurotechnology Fund (3893630)" in order to make a donation to support our research.

How to join the lab

Independent, energetic postdoctoral fellow candidates with a passion for creating the future are encouraged to write. I like to regard a postdoctoral experience in my lab as a mutually educational and collaborative journey into the inventing or solving of something really important. Please feel free to write with a description of your experiences, interests, and current and future goals. Ideally it would be best if you could also have three letters of reference emailed to me. Going for postdoctoral funding is a plus.

Graduate students from almost any MIT department can do research in our lab. Medical, Ph.D., or M.D.-Ph.D. students in the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program, and in the M.D. program of Harvard Medical School, are also welcome. Many of our lab members come from the MIT Ph.D. programs in Biological Engineering, Media Arts and Sciences, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Health Science and Technology, Physics, Mechanical Engineering, and Brain and Cognitive Sciences. I also suggest that you apply for a graduate research fellowship (NSF, NDSEG, Hertz, etc.).

Undergraduates interested in doing research should write to Ed Boyden at [email protected], including a CV and a description of your short-term and long-term research interests.