Researcher | Research Background
Maria Lehtinen received her Ph.D. in Neurobiology from Harvard University, where she trained with Azad Bonni on signaling mechanisms that regulate neuronal survival and death. She joined Anna-Elina Lehesjoki’s lab for her first postdoc at the University of Helsinki where she investigated the role of redox homeostasis in progressive myoclonus epilepsy. She then carried out a second postdoc with Christopher A. Walsh at Children’s Hospital where she discovered that secreted factors in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) play an active role in instructing the development of the mammalian cerebral cortex. The Lehtinen lab carries out basic and translational research on CSF-based signaling. She has been supported by the NIH, NSF, Ellison/AFAR, and the Sigrid Juselius Foundation, and is currently an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow.