Shannon Johnson
[Email: slj, followed by @MIT.EDU]
Shannon studied Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Brown University where she investigated the use of mesenchymal stem cell-derived extracellular vesicles to treat liver damage from acetaminophen overdose in mice. She spent a year after graduating still in Providence, RI, working on the influence of circadian rhythm on the properties of extracellular vesicles. After coming to Boston, Shannon worked in the Neurobiology Department of the Harvard Medical School with a lab doing high throughput drug screening for compounds to improve memory and learning. In addition, for a year she was a part-time Research Technician at the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms working on directed evolution of bacteria and algae. Shannon, in her graduate work at MIT, is exploring tools to illuminate the dynamic relationship between the immune system and nervous system.