Edward S. Boyden (born August 18, 1979) is an American-French neuroscientist and entrepreneur atMIT. He is the Y. Eva Tan Professor in Neurotechnology, and a full member of theMcGovern Institute for Brain Research.[1] He is recognized for his work onoptogenetics andexpansion microscopy. Boyden joined the MIT faculty in 2007, and continues to develop new optogenetic tools as well as other technologies for the manipulation and analysis of brain structure and activity.[2] He received the 2015Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.[3]
Boyden was born inPlano, Texas. His mother, Nit Boyden, has a masters degree in biochemistry and conducted research onnicotine, later staying home to tend to Boyden and his sister. His father, Ed Boyden Jr., worked inmanagement consulting.[4] In childhood, Boyden wanted to understand humanity, at first preferring math over science. He eventually pivoted to being interested in how our minds are capable of understanding math. As a young teenager, his thoughts resulted in what he now calls the "loop of understanding": "Math is how we understand things at a deep level, our minds do math, the brain gives rise to our minds, biology governs our brains, chemistry implements biology, the principles of physics rule over chemistry, and physics run on math. It’s a loop from math to math, with all the knowledge in between."[5]
Boyden won a statewide science fair in Texas at age 12 with a project in geometry.[5] At 14, Boyden began attending theTexas Academy of Mathematics and Science at the University of North Texas where he studied chemistry and mathematics alongside his high school coursework. There, he worked inPaul Braterman's lab examining the origins of life chemistry.[6]
Boyden began his studies atMIT in 1995 at the age of 16, skipping two grades.[5] In 1999 he completed an SB degree in physics and in electrical engineering and computer science as well as an MEng degreee in electrical engineering and computer science, writing his thesis onquantum computing under the supervision ofNeil Gershenfeld, a professor in theMIT Media Lab.[6][7]
Following his PhD, Boyden worked as a Helen Hay Whitney postdoctoral fellow in the departments of bioengineering, applied physics, and biology at Stanford University for a year. There, he worked withMark Schnitzer andKarl Deisseroth to invent optical methods in neuroscience research.[6] In 2006, he moved to MIT to work as a visiting scientist in theMIT Media Lab, leading the Neuroengineering and Neuromedia Group.[6]
In 2007, Boyden established the Synthetic Neurobiology Group at MIT and also began working as an assistant professor in the MIT Media Lab and MIT Department of Biological Engineering. The next year, he became an assistant professor in the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.[6]
Boyden became an investigator at the MIT McGovern Institute in 2010.[6] In 2013, he established the MIT Center for Neurobiological Engineering, which he now co-directs alongsideAlan Jasanoff.[8] He became an extramural member of the MIT Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research in 2017 before he was appointed the Y. Eva Tan Professor in Neurotechnology at MIT a year later.[6] 7 years after arriving at MIT, Boyden was awarded tenure as a full time professor.[9]
In 2020, Boyden became an investigator at theHoward Hughes Medical Institute. The following year, he began co-directing the K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics at MIT.[6]
In optogenetics, a light-sensitive ion channel or pump such aschannelrhodopsin-2 is genetically expressed in neurons, allowing neuronal activity to be controlled by light. There were early efforts to achieve targeted optical control dating back to 2002 that did not involve a directly light-activated ion channel,[10] but it was the method based on directly light-activated channels from microbes, such as channelrhodopsin, emerging in 2005 that turned out to be broadly useful. Optogenetics in this way has been widely adopted by neuroscientists as a research tool, and it is also thought to have potential therapeutic applications.[11]
Boyden reported in 2007 that targeting the codon-optimized light-drivenhalorhodopsin chloride pump (Halo) fromNatronomas pharaonis allowed for optogenetic silencing with yellow light.[12] Later in 2010, he reported thatarchaerhodopsin-3 (Arch) fromHalorubrum sodomense facilitated near-complete silencing of neurons using yellow light. Arch is also capable of spontaneously recovering from inactivation unlike Halo, which goes into lengthy inactive states. Its high performance enabled many new neuroscientific investigations using brain engineering.[13]
In 2014, Boyden reported how the channelrhodopsin Chronos could respond extremely fast to light, and how the channelrhodopsin Chrimson responded to red light. Chronos'skinetics is quicker than previous channelrhodopsins but is more sensitive to light. This discovery enabled two-color activation of neurons without significant cross-talk.[14] This led to the first optogenetics in people in 2021, where a blind patient was injected with anadeno-associatedviral vector encoding ChrimsonR coupled with goggle-enabled light stimulation. The patient successfully perceived, located, counted, and touched objects using the vector-treated eye with the goggles. This case reports the greatest partial functional recovery to date, for such forms of blindness.[15]
The cruxhalorhodopsin (Jaws) from Haloarcula salinarum was engineered to induce inhibition in response to red light in 2014.[16] In 2017, Boyden designed a high-efficacy soma-targetedopsin through combining theN-terminal 150 residues of kainate receptor subunit 2 (KA2) to the high-photocurrent channelrhodopsin CoChR. This restricts its expression to neural somas, responding toholographic stimulation with temporal precision.[17]
Expansion microscopy (ExM) was developed as an alternative to thelight microscope, which is limited in resolution. In 2015, Boyden was able to expand a specimen by synthesizing a swellablepolymer network within it. By attaching specific label on the network, its swelling allows for the isotropic separation andoptical resolution. This allows forsuperresolution microscopy using diffraction-limited microscopes.[18] ExM has been optimized forproteins,[19]nucleic acids,[20] clinical tissues,[21] decrowding,[22]in situsequencing,[23] and has developed a larger expansion factor.[24] In 2018, Boyden developed a method of shrinking3D printed materials to achievenanoscale feature sizes. By usinghydrogel scaffolds, Implosion Fabrication (ImpFab) createsconductive 3D silvernanostructures with complex geometries and resolutions in the tens of nanometers.[25]
In 2017, Boyden reported anoninvasive method of deep electrical stimulation of neurons. By deliveringelectric fields at frequencies higher than that able to recruit neural firing but within itsdynamic range, neurons within a region enveloped by the electric field can be modulated. This temporal interference (TI) successfully altered motor patterns in living mice.[26] TI was validated in humans in 2023 where it modulatedhippocampal activity and increased the accuracy ofepisodic memories in healthy subjects.[27]
Multiplexed imaging is the simultaneous measurement of the dynamics of many signals within asignal transduction network. In 2020, Boyden fused afluorescent reporter to a pair of aself-assembling peptides to create signaling reporter islands (SiRIs), which can be modularly designed. SiRIs can thus be adapted for simultaneous measurement of multiple signals in a network within single cells distant enough to be resolved under a microscope but close enough to spatially sample the biology (spatial multiplexing).[28] Temporally multiplexed imaging (TMI), reported in 2023, uses genetically encoded fluorescent proteins with temporal properties to represent different signals. This is used to examine relationships betweenkinase activities within single cells in addition tocell-cycle activities.[29] In 2018, Boyden reported a novel method of engineering complex proteins toward multidimensional specification through robotically picking identified cells as expressing proteins simultaneously exhibiting several properties. This enables the screening of hundreds of thousands of proteins in a few hours while evaluating each for multiple performance properties.[30] The robot was applied to develop a fluorescent voltage indicator, Archon. Voltage imaging, using Archon as well as indicators made by other groups, was applied in areas of the mouse brain in 2019[31] and later across the entire brains of larval zebrafish in 2023.[32]
Boyden has nearly 300 patented inventions, including a steerable surgical stapler, methods and apparatus for neuromodulation, expansion microscopy, and light-activated proton pumps.[33]
Boyden is the co-founder ofElemind,[34] a neurotechnology company that augments sleep, attention, and the human experience.[35] Elemind launched its neurotech headband that employs brainwaves to treat sleep disorders, long-term pain, and tremors on June 4, 2024.[36]
He also co-founded Cognito Therapeutics, a company developing therapeutics designed to improve the lives of patients living withneurodegenerative disease. Specifically, Boyden aims utilize findings about sensory stimulation evoking gamma activity inAlzheimer's disease to slow its progression.[37]
Boyden co-founded Expansion Technologies, aiming to enable the early disease detection by utilizing their novelsuper-resolution imaging method that physically expands samples,[38] as well as Synlife, which innovates therapeutic platforms through bottom-up engineering of synthetic cells with a focus on theencapsulation ofenzyme pathways.[39]
Boyden is the scientific advisor ofE11 Bio, anonprofit project focused onneurotechnology development with a focus on brain circuit mapping.[40]
He is the head of advisory board at Inner Cosmos whose mission is to healdepression with their Digital Pill, a penny-sized implant rebalancing brain networks withmicrostimulations.[41]
In 2019, close connections between the MIT Media Lab andJeffrey Epstein were revealed, with directorJoi Ito and mechanical engineering professorSeth Lloyd being involved, as well asNeil Gershenfeld, Boyden's former advisor at MIT. An investigation conducted by law firmGoodwin Procter at the request of the MIT Corporation determined that Boyden had met with Epstein on at least five occasions.[42] Later that year, Boyden made a statement clarifying details about his relationship with Epstein, stating that he regretted meeting with Epstein to discuss research despite "knowing that Epstein had been convicted of a serious crime."[43]
The release of portions of theEpstein files in 2025 and 2026 generated renewed discussion among the MIT community regarding the university's ties to Epstein. MIT student newspaperThe Tech reported on several emails between Boyden and Epstein.[42] The two also met on several occasions with Ito and with Harvard professorMartin Nowak, who had accepted significant funding from Epstein.[42] Other emails indicated that Boyden was a featured guest at a dinner hosted byReid Hoffman, whose attendees included Epstein, Ito,Mark Zuckerberg,Peter Thiel, andElon Musk, and which was described by Epstein as "wild."[44][45]
Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences (2015), one of five scientists awarded for “transformative advances toward understanding living systems and extending human life.”[3][52]
Canada Gairdner Foundation International Award, shared with Karl Deisseroth and Peter Hegemann
^Wang, Zeguan; Zhang, Jie; Symvoulidis, Panagiotis; Guo, Wei; Zhang, Lige; Wilson, Matthew A.; Boyden, Edward S. (2023-12-16). "Imaging the voltage of neurons distributed across entire brains of larval zebrafish".bioRxiv10.1101/2023.12.15.571964.
