Beth Stevens

Beth Stevens received B.S. (1993) from Northeastern University and a Ph.D. (2003) from the University of Maryland. She was a postdoctoral fellow (2005–2008) at Stanford University and is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and the F. M. Kirby Neurobiology Center at Boston Children’s Hospital. She is also an Institute Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Her scientific papers have appeared in such journals as Neuron, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Nature Neuroscience, among others. Beth Stevens is a neuroscientist whose research on microglial cells is prompting a significant shift in thinking about neuron communication in the healthy brain and the origins of adult neurological diseases. Until recently, it was believed that the primary function of microglia was immunological; they protected the brain by reducing inflammation and removing foreign bodies.