ResearchAssistant

By working at Harvard University, you join a vibrant community that advances Harvard's world-changing mission in meaningful ways, inspires innovation and collaboration, and builds skills and expertise. We are dedicated to creating a diverse and welcoming environment where everyone can thrive. Why join Harvard Medical School? Harvard Medical School's mission is to nurture a diverse, inclusive community dedicated to alleviating suffering and improving health and well-being for all through excellence in teaching and learning, discovery and scholarship, and service and leadership. You’ll be at the heart of biomedical discovery, education, and innovation, working alongside world-renowned faculty and a community dedicated to improving human health. This is more than a job - it’s an opportunity to shape the future of medicine. The Greenberg lab at Harvard Medical School examines how neuronal activity shapes the maturation and plasticity of the nervous system. Sensory experience shapes the development of neural circuits during early-life windows of heightened plasticity, known as critical periods. While the key factors that drive critical period opening have been extensively characterized, the specific cues that restrain developmental plasticity as animals mature are less clear. For this project, we will characterize a new molecular pathway discovered in our laboratory by which circulating glucocorticoids act on glial cells in the brain to close critical periods of plasticity. We will further examine how early-life stress, which elevates glucocorticoid levels and increases susceptibility to many neuropsychiatric diseases, alters the timing of developmental plasticity to disrupt cognition, memory, and behavior. Collectively, this project will help us better understand the fundamental mechanisms gating neuronal plasticity, which may lead to the development of therapeutic strategies for treating human disorders. We are looking to hire a curious, motivated, highly organized res