Dr. Fiona Harrison is an Associate Professor within the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and a member of the Vanderbilt Memory Alzheimer’s Center. The major focus of Dr. Harrison’s research is on nutritional and environmental factors, such as vitamin C deficiency or manganese exposure, that can directly impact the development of Alzheimer’s disease neuropathology and age-related cognitive decline. Dr. Harrison utilizes a multidisciplinary approach including in vitro studies, ex vivo molecular biology, electrophysiology and behavioral approaches to address research questions in the lab. The ultimate goal of this work is identification of specific pathways underlying cognitive ability that can be impacted by diet, or targeted therapeutically using dietary, supplement or pharmacological approaches. Dr. Harrison is the Director of the Vanderbilt Neurobehavioral Core facility. She collaborates with other research groups, locally and Nationwide, to phenotype new mouse models of a wide range of diseases to understand responses to novel therapeutics, and to adapt and refine behavioral protocols for more detailed phenotyping to extend research findings. She is a committed mentor and works closely with trainees in her laboratory from High School through to post-doctoral fellows.