Alexandra Alvarsson, PhD, is a senior scientist in Sarah Stanley’s lab at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She is particularly interested in the link between metabolism, endocrinology and the brain, and she believes there is a call for a deeper understanding of how these entities interact during healthy and disease states. She did her PhD in the lab of professor Per Svenningsson at the Karolinska Institute where she focused on the characterization of experimental models of psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. She has also investigated diabetes-related complications under Professor Kerstin Brismar and Dr. Harvest Gu at the Karolinska Institute. In Dr. Sarah Stanley’s lab her aim is to map the circuitry, identify markers and assess the roles of glucose-sensing neurons of the central nervous system. These neurons are implicated in pathological conditions characterized by altered glucose sensitivity, including type 2 diabetes mellitus, obesity and insulin-induced hypoglycemia. The long-term goal of this research is to identify alternative therapeutic interventions for metabolic disorders by targeting the central nervous system. To this end she is using viral tools, neuroimaging techniques, optical tissue clearing, behavioral assays, magneto- and chemogenetics.