Brittany Larsen
Biography: Early in her career, Dr. Brittany Larsen practiced as a Registered Dietitian. While practicing, she was astounded by the sheer abundance in the gaps in knowledge regarding how to most optimally support health from a nutritional standpoint. This realization ignited strong interest in an entirely new career trajectory: research. Consequently, she I returned to graduate school after 2 1/2 years of practice, during which time she also discovered early on that my greatest passion was for the field of neuroscience. After this realization, she then pursued a Ph.D. in Neuroscience at Iowa State University, where she joined a laboratory that conducted research in Alzheimer's disease.
After graduating from her Ph.D. program in 2023, she completed her first postdoctoral fellowship at MD Anderson Cancer Center, where she conducted research on neurobiology underlying nicotine and food addiction. However, it was during this position that she realized my greatest research passion was in Alzheimer's disease. She consequently joined the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at University of Miami Miller School of Medicine as a postdoctoral scholar in January 2025 in order to pursue this research passion. Specifically, she is a neuroscientist whose core research interests are the investigation of novel biobehavioral solutions to reduce Alzheimer's disease risk, progression, and Alzheimer's-associated brain pathology. In addition, she is also interested in researching the use of digital devices (predominantly neuroimaging approaches) to explore potential therapeutics for more effective diagnosis of as well as prediction for Alzheimer's disease. In spite of Alzheimer's disease being discovered in 1906 by Alois Alzheimer, there are still many unanswered questions about the disease as well as the mechanisms that underlie it. She aims to change this through the power of research.
