Dr. Rachel Bennett is an Assistant Professor in Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Research in Rachel’s lab focuses on understanding how blood vessels in the brain change in disease and how this might contribute to the loss of neurons in Alzheimer’s disease. Rachel grew up on the West Coast of the U.S. and loved exploring the nearby mountains. This is something she has missed since moving to Boston, MA, so she recently started hiking some of the 48 peaks over 4,000 feet in New Hampshire in her free time. She also enjoys visiting the beautiful beaches nearby. Getting outside is a good reset button for her to recover from the stresses of work in the lab. She received her B.S. in Molecular Biology from Arizona State University and her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Washington University in St. Louis. Afterwards, she conducted postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital before joining the faculty there. Rachel has been named an Outstanding Emerging Scientist by the BrightFocus Foundation, and she received the New Investigator Award from the Charleston Conferences on Alzheimer’s Disease (CCAD). In this interview, she shares more about her life and science.
