Caitlyn Smith

Caitlyn is a visiting medical student from the University of Missouri School of Medicine in the Laboratory for Neural Engineering and Control. Her research focuses on how brain injury and neural circuit dysfunction alter cortical activity, with current work examining how selective versus non-selective activation of locus coeruleus neurons differentially shapes cortical states using optogenetics and simultaneous EEG recordings in mice.

Previously, Caitlyn studied traumatic brain injury across cellular, histopathological, and circuit-level models. At the University of Pennsylvania Department of Neurosurgery, she investigated the effects of cortical impact injury on transplanted human cortical organoids in rats. At Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, she studied chronic neuropathology and extracellular matrix remodeling associated with post-traumatic epilepsy in swine.

 B.S. in Biology and Chemistry, University of Missouri, 2022