Markita Landry, associate professor of neuroscience and chemical & biomolecular engineering, is the winner of the 2026 Rennie Fund for the Study of Epilepsy. The Rennie Fund was created as the result of a bequest from the Mary Elizabeth Rennie Trust and is administered by the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute (HWNI) at UC Berkeley. The fund provides awards to support basic research into neuronal activity and synaptic function including but not limited to epilepsy.
Landry will receive funding for a project that will investigate how seizures begin by directly visualizing dopamine during seizure-like activity, using a new class of optical nanosensor developed in the Landry lab. According to her proposal, this work addresses a major technological gap in neuroscience by enabling real-time observation of chemical signaling in the brain, and could open the door to new therapeutic strategies for patients with epilepsy.
