Annalisa Scimemi

Career

In 2002, Scimemi joined the lab of Dimitri M. Kullmann at University College London. At UCL, Scimemi studied central synapses and neurotransmitter spillover, working with Dimitri M. Kullmann, Dmitri A. Rusakov, Matthew C. Walker, and others.

In 2005, Scimemi moved to the United States to join the lab of Jeffrey S. Diamond at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. She continued to study hippocampal synapses, analyzing more specifically at the role of neuronal and astrocytic glutamate transporters in regulating inter-synaptic cross-talk. After earning an appointment as research fellow at NIH in 2010, she studied how the spatial distribution of calcium channels in the presynaptic active zone affects glutamate release at hippocampal synapses. She also started new collaborations that branched her research focus to Alzheimer's disease.

Scimemi joined the faculty of the Department of Biology at SUNY Albany in 2013 and became an adjunct professor in the Department of Physics in 2015. She became an associate professor in 2019. In her lab, she aims to identify how neurons and astrocytes regulate encoding of spatial information and reward-based behaviors in health and disease.

Since 2017, she has served as an instructor for the summer course, Ion Channels in Synaptic & Neural Circuit Physiology, at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Her scientific interests, though rooted in synaptic physiology, branch to other fields of neuroscience including systems neuroscience, which she fueled during her sabbatical in the lab of Bernardo Sabatini at Harvard Medical School.

Research

Scimemi studies the functional properties of central synapses and how they are tuned by non-neuronal cells called astrocytes in neuropsychiatric disorders, using techniques such as electrophysiology, optogenetics, two-photon laser scanning microscopy, and reaction-diffusion computer simulations. Her works provide insights into how synaptic transmission changes in the hippocampus with circadian cycles.

Scimemi's software "NRN-EZ" providing easy access to biophysical modeling of neurons (allowing distribution of synaptic inputs onto digitally reconstructed neurons) was described in one of Scientific Reports' 100 most-downloaded research studies in 2023.

Awards, honors, and service

• 2025: President's Award for Excellence in Research and Creative Activities from SUNY Albany.
• 2023: Honorary Award for Distinguished Public Engagement from SUNY Albany.
• 2023: Awarded grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders & Stroke, for her research on neuronal circuits in spatial map representation, titled Presynaptic Modulation of Synaptic Inhibition onto Hippocampal Pyramidal Neurons.
• 2022: Awarded grant from the National Institute on Aging to study molecular and cellular processes that contribute to Alzheimer's disease onset.
• 2020: Awarded grant from the National Science Foundation to understand the effect of circadian rhythms on hippocampal function.
• 2015–present: Scimemi serves as the President for the Society for Neuroscience Hudson-Berkshire Chapter.
• 2020 - 2022: The board of the Organization for Computational NeuroScience (OCNS) appointed her to serve on the OCNS Program Committee.
• 2013: Scimemi chaired the Nanosymposium on Presynaptic Dynamics of the Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.
• 2013: Grass Imaging Award from The Grass Foundation.
• 2012: Invited speaker at the Gordon Research Conference on Synaptic Transmission.
• 2005: Young Investigator Award from the International League Against Epilepsy.