May 6, 2025
This story originally appeared in Yale Engineering magazine.
How does a brain form a memory, and why does it store certain ones, while others fade away? How does it allow a person to learn? These questions are at the core of what makes the brain so mysterious. But what if we had the technology to better see the brain’s hardware — the neurons, synapses, and so much else — that would allow us to answer these questions?
That’s what Cristina Rodríguez is working on. A big part of her lab’s mission is combining her backgrounds in physics and engineering to develop optical microscopy tools to better visualize critical biological processes as they happen naturally, with a particular focus on applications in neuroscience. That is, she’s building new and better microscopes to see what couldn’t be seen before.
See full news article here.