Mary E. Harrington
American chronobiologist
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Through Sensory nervous system and Alzheimer's disease
Background
After completing her Ph.D., Harrington conducted postdoctoral research at Dalhousie University from 1986 to 1987, working with Dr. Benjamin Rusak. In 1987, she joined Smith College as an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology. She was promoted to associate professor in 1995 and became a full professor in 2003. In 2005, she was appointed as the Tippit Professor in the Life Sciences. Starting from 2014, Harrington has served as Director of the Neuroscience Program at Smith College.
Since 1987, Harrington has been a member of the Neuroscience and Behavior Program at University of Massachusetts at Amherst (UMass Amherst). Since 2000, she becomes an adjunct member at UMass Amherst's Center for Neuroendocrine Studies.
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Key contributions
Research and findings
In September 1986, Harrington published her Ph.D. thesis, "Behavioral, anatomical and physiological studies of the geniculo-suprachiasmatic tract in the golden hamster" at Dalhousie University. It focused on geniculo-suprachiasmatic tract neurons and how light input altered responsiveness of the circadian rhythm to photic information.
In 1986, Harrington visited Patricia J. DeCoursey's lab as a postdoc and spent several months setting her up to conduct immunocytochemical studies. DeCoursey was a pioneer female scientist in chronobiology for years, especially known for defining the phase response curve.
Besides the role as a researcher, Harrington dedicates her time as a mentor. She teaches about neuroanatomy, sensory systems, Alzheimer's disease, and experimental methods in neuroscience and is open to include undergraduate researchers in her lab. Harrington is also vocal about the general science community which she participated in SfN Annual meeting 2016 and advocated "Optimizing Experimental Design for High-Quality Science".
In 2020, Harrington became the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Biological Rhythms, sponsored by the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms (SRBR). Harrington is also part of the program Community 4 Rigor, an NIH funded project to improve rigor in science. She believed that working against bias is the key for scientific research.