Lindsay Schwarz, PhD, assistant member of the St. Jude Developmental Neurobiology faculty
Lindsay Schwarz, PhD, an assistant member of the Department of Developmental Neurobiology at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, is a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) — the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government to outstanding scientists and engineers who are beginning their independent research. The award recognizes innovative and far-reaching developments in science and technology and enhances connections between research and societal impacts.
Schwarz was nominated for PECASE by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She had already received the prestigious NIH Director’s New Innovator Award in 2019, which was based on the strength of her proposal to develop a tool for improving the ease and accuracy of studying and manipulating specific subpopulations of cells. The Schwarz lab’s progress on this research was published in Nature Neuroscience in 2024.
“Dr. Schwarz’s work is not only obtaining a deeper understanding of neurons, their circuits and associated behaviors,” said Michael Dyer, PhD, St. Jude Developmental Neurobiology chair. “She is also developing tools to target and manipulate neurons that other investigators can use to make discoveries.”
Schwarz joined the St. Jude faculty in 2017. She is also affiliated with the hospital’s Division of Neural Circuits and Behavior, the Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Neurobiology and Brain Tumor Program and the St. Jude Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. Her research interests include mechanisms regulating diverse functions of neuromodulatory circuits, activity patterns of neuromodulatory neurons in vivo during arousal-related behaviors, the molecular diversity of locus coeruleus neurons, and how changes in neuromodulatory circuits promote psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders.
Schwarz has received numerous awards since joining St. Jude, including the Young Investigator Award from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, the Neurobiology of Brain Disorders Award from the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience, the Rita Allen Foundation Scholar Award and the Hartwell Foundation Individual Biomedical Research Award. She joins other St. Jude PECASE recipients, Brenda Schulman, PhD.
Schwarz has received numerous awards since joining St. Jude, including the Young Investigator Award from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, the Neurobiology of Brain Disorders Award from the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience, the Rita Allen Foundation Scholar Award and the Hartwell Foundation Individual Biomedical Research Award. She joins other St. Jude PECASE recipients, Brenda Schulman, PhD (2004) and Georgios Skiniotis, PhD (2011). She earned her PhD in biology at the University of California, San Diego, her bachelor of science at the University of Washington and completed postdoctoral training at Stanford University.
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is leading the way the world understands, treats and cures childhood cancer, sickle cell disease, and other life-threatening disorders. It is the only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center devoted solely to children. Treatments developed at St. Jude have helped push the overall childhood cancer survival rate from 20% to 80% since the hospital opened more than 60 years ago. St. Jude shares the breakthroughs it makes to help doctors and researchers at local hospitals and cancer centers around the world improve the quality of treatment and care for even more children. To learn more, visit stjude.org, read St. Jude Progress, a digital magazine, and follow St. Jude on social media at @stjuderesearch.